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Histoire de Melody Nelson: Serge Gainsbourg’s psychedelic orchestral rock opera

Histoire De Melody Nelson has an amazing—and utterly unique—sound. It’s pretty much still to this day the cutting edge of what you can do with a rock group and an orchestra (no matter what The Moody Blues or Deep Purple might think). The way Gainsbourg and arranger Jean-Claude Vannier use the strings here is simply uncanny, providing a big influence on Pulp, Air and Beck (who later famously worked with Charlotte Gainsbourg). This innovative 1971 album is easily in the same class as Anglo-American contemporaries like Bitches Brew or Sticky Fingers. (Pitchfork named it #21 in the top 100 albums of the 1970s).