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Actress Scarlett Johansson has joined forces in the studio with the son of iconic French pop singer Serge Gainsbourg to record a new cover of Gainsbourg’s legendary spoken-word hit “Bonnie and Clyde.”
While the new track, the first single off Lulu Gainsbourg‘s tribute album to his father, may lack the echoey, underground intensity of the original, the pairing of the younger Gainsbourg with Johansson makes a lot of sense as a tribute to the original 1968 recording. Serge Gainsbourg’s French-language song was based on a poem about the outlaw couple’s life written by Bonnie Parker herself, and he recorded it as a duet with a starlet who might, with vague apologies all around, be called the Scarlett Johansson of her time: Brigitte Bardot.
One notable change: Johansson speaks her parts in English.
Lulu Gainsbourg, who now lives in New York, worked with a rainbow of other guests on the album as well, including Rufus Wainwright, Vanessa Paradis, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Depp. (Depp, you may recall, sang capably in the film version of Sweeney Todd).
Click here to listen to the track at SoundCloud.
