Lemon Incest is a song interpreted in duet between Serge Gainsbourg and his/her daughter Charlotte, appeared in 1984 on the album Love one the Beat of Serge Gainsbourg.

The music is inspired by the study No 3 in so major COp 10 of Frederic Chopin. The words are of Serge Gainsbourg. The choruses are carried out by the Simms Brothers. This song is one of rare to approach the topics of the Inceste and the Pédophilie. The title comes from the word game present in the refrain between “a lemon Inceste” and “piece of lemon peel”. Thus Charlotte, twelve years old, evokes “love which we will never make together”. In the same spirit, the Video clip of this song, shows Serge, barechested and Charlotte, wearing a shirt and breeches, lengthened on a great bed, without however touching itself.

This song caused a scandal: initially because the pedophilia and the inceste are subjects which it is very badly seen to cover from a positive point of view (Vladimir Nabokov asserted this violation of the interdict by writing Lolita ); however in the song, it is the purity of this love which is proposed. Then, the family ties between the two singers are the same one as that of the characters of the song, which involved suspicions on the autobiographical character of work. Serge defended himself some publicly.

In fact the true subject of the song is the desire of inceste and not its physical realization. Moreover the desire expressed by Serge Gainsbourg does not mean desire to pass to the act physically, but from a platonic love, an affection if developed that it is close to a feeling of inceste. This distinction lies in the words of Gainsbourg in the mouth of Charlotte, who sussure: “The love that we will never make together is rarest, most disconcerting, purest, more enivrant”. And Gainsbourg to connect, while psalmodiant: “Exquisite draft, delicious child, my flesh and my blood… ”.

Serge Gainsourg probably acted with an aim of provocation on a subject which, at the time just like today, is the object of an absolute interdict. It was not the first time that it made sing words very charged érotiquement by a girl whose age attested innocence, since it also made sing the Lollipops with France Gall, at the time too young including/understanding the double direction of the words, which could evoke the Fellation.

This piece is regarded as the work which made known Charlotte Gainsbourg, who has since fact her own career in the song and the cinema.

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