If you listen to the record now, you can still hear that little gap.' There was media speculation, as with the Bardot version, that they had recorded live sex, to which Gainsbourg told Birkin, 'Thank goodness it wasn't, otherwise I hope it would have been a long-playing record.' It was released in February 1969. Birkin said she 'got a bit carried away with the heavy breathing вЂ“ so much so, in fact, that I was told to calm down, which meant that at one point I stopped breathing altogether. It was recorded in an arrangement by Arthur Greenslade in a studio at Marble Arch. Gainsbourg asked her to sing an octave higher than Bardot, 'so you'll sound like a little boy'. She said: 'I only sang it because I didn't want anybody else to sing it', jealous at the thought of his sharing a recording studio with someone else. Birkin had heard the Bardot version and thought it 'so hot'. After filming, he asked her to record the song with him.

In 1968, Gainsbourg and English actress Jane Birkin began a relationship when they met on the set of the film Slogan. For the first time in my life, I write a love song and it's taken badly.' :вЂЉ92 He complied but observed 'The music is very pure. Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release it.

However, news of the recording reached the press and Bardot's husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, was angry and called for the single to be withdrawn. They recorded an arrangement of 'Je t'aime' by Michel Colombier at a Paris studio in a two-hour session in a small glass booth the engineer William Flageollet said there was 'heavy petting'. She asked him to write the most beautiful love song he could imagine and that night he wrote 'Je t'aime' and ' Bonnie and Clyde'.

The song was written and recorded in late 1967 for Gainsbourg's girlfriend, Brigitte Bardot.

Merci mon ami translation