Serge Gainsbourg child Lulu Gainsbourg
1982–1991: Final years and death
In 1982, Gainsbourg contributed his songwriting to French rockstar Alain Bashung's album Play blessures, which was a left turn creatively for Bashung and is often considered a cult classic despite negative contemporary reviews. His second film as a director, Équateur (1983), was adapted from the 1933 novel Tropic Moon by Belgian writer Georges Simenon and is set in colonialist French Equatorial Africa.Love on the Beat (1984) saw Gainsbourg move on from reggae and onto a more electronic, new wave inspired sound. The album is known for addressing taboo sexual subject matters, with Gainsbourg dressed in drag on the cover and the highly controversial duet with his daughter Charlotte, "Lemon Incest", which seemed to ambiguously refer to the impossible physical love between an adult and his child. The music video for the song featured a half-naked Gainsbourg lying on a bed with Charlotte, leading to further controversy. Nevertheless, it was Gainsbourg's highest-charting song in France. In March 1984, he  illegally burned three-quarters of a 500-French-franc bill on television to protest against taxes rising up to 74% of income. In April 1986, on Michel Drucker's live Saturday evening television show Champs-Élysées, with the American singer Whitney Houston, he objected to Drucker's translating his comments to Houston and, in English, stated: "I said, I want to fuck her"—Drucker, utterly embarrassed, insisted that this meant "He says you are great..." That same year, in another talk show interview, he appeared alongside Les Rita Mitsouko singer Catherine Ringer. Gainsbourg spat out at her, "You're nothing but a filthy whore" to which Ringer replied, "look at you, you're just a bitter old alcoholic...you've become a disgusting old parasite."Gainsbourg's final partner until his death was the model Caroline Paulus, better known by her stage name Bambou. They had a son, Lucien (b. 5 January 1986), who now goes by the name Lulu and is a musician. His 1986 film Charlotte for Ever further expanded on the themes found in "Lemon Incest". He starred in the film alongside Charlotte as a widowed, alcoholic father living with his daughter.  An album of the same name by Charlotte was also written by Gainsbourg.
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