Discover the story of the song > Ballade de Melody Nelson – Serge Gainsbourg

- Histoire de Melody Nelson is an album of Serge Gainsbourg released in 1971.
- It is his first conceptual album.
- It was written in collaboration with the composer and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier.
- The album stands out from the rest of Gainsbourg's work, and can be compared musically to L'Homme à tête de chou, another conceptual album released five years later.
- The album is a tribute to the work of Vladimir Nabokov, and is built around a story and a young female character, actually played by Gainsbourg's muse, Jane Birkin.
- Birkin provides the voice of Melody Nelson, as well as the album cover.
- Vannier comments on the gestation of the album on his website.
- He remembers meeting Gainsbourg in London, where they were both living at the time.
- The album was recorded in a hotel where Oscar Wilde spent his last days before being sent to prison.