First Listen: Charlotte Gainsbourg, 'Rest'
On "Kate," one of the most arresting songs on 's new album , the French singer and actor was inspired to write her own lyrics for the first time. But the occasion was a tragic one. In 2013, her elder half-sister Kate Barry died after falling from the window of her Paris apartment in what was ruled a suicide.—but they share the same mother, the singer-actor Jane Birkin, and grew up together. Grappling with that, Gainsbourg renders "Kate" as a pulsing, urgent discourse on grief shrouded in symphonic synths and her own breathy vocals. She overcame her reluctance to pen the song herself not only because of the personal subject matter, but because of Serge Gainsbourg's legacy as one of France's cultural icons. "In the shadow of my father," , "writing in French was something I never dared to do."
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