#1: Je T’aime Moi Non Plus by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg
City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFRA
Peak Month: November-December 1969
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #58
Peak position on Austrian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak position on Norwegian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak position on Swiss Singles chart ~ #1
Peak position on UK Singles chart ~ #1
Peak position on Dutch Singles chart ~ #2
Peak position on Irish Singles chart ~ #2
Peak position on West German Singles chart ~ #3
Peak position on Mexican Singles chart ~ #5
YouTube: “Je T’aime Moi Non Plus”
Lyrics: “Je T’aime Moi Non Plus”
Serge Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris, France, in 1928. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Lucien enrolled in the Ecole Normal in Paris at age 12. His childhood was profoundly affected by the occupation of France by Germany during World War II. The identifying yellow star that Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg. In later years he was able to transmute this memory into creative inspiration with his 1975 song “Yellow Star”. During WWII he escaped with his family to Limoges, in France’s free zone. The family took refuge in the town of Grand Vedeix in the commune of Saint Cyr in the Haute-Vienne department, using the name Guimbard. He was hidden by nuns at Sacré-Cœur. He remained a boarder there for six months under his false identity. One evening, the Gestapo raided the establishment to check that no Jewish children were hiding there. Warned, the boarding school officials sent him to hide alone in the forest, equipped with an axe to defend himself, where Lucien spent the entire night in fear of being caught and killed.