About

Serge Gainsbourg Hommage, also known in French as Les Petits Chanteurs d'Asnières Rendent Hommage À Serge Gainsbourg, is a viral video of French singer Serge Gainsbourg in tears facing children dressed like him on the set of a show. The video has been popular since 2009, often resurfacing on social media in ironic memes and jokes about French people.

Origin

In 1988, the French kids group Les Petits Chanteurs d'Asnières performed a hommage to singer Serge Gainsbourg for a local TV program by dressing like Gainsbourg, holding a cigarette and a whisky in their hands. The earliest found video of the hommage was uploaded on YouTube ^[1] by user @bestofpop on May 8th, 2009. The post amassed over 18,000 views and 77 likes in 14 years.

The kids are singing Serge’s “J’e suis venu te dire que je m’en vais” (“I came to tell you that I’m leaving”) but they’ve changed it to “On est venu te dire qu’on t’aime bien” (We came to tell you that we like you).

Spread

The video resurfaced on September 28th, 2021, after X^[2] user @adam_piron shared a clip of the hommage (shown below), which amassed more than 16,300 likes and 3,800 retweets in two years.

i’ve not known peace since learning about the time a children’s choir went on French tv in full Serge Gainsbourg drag and sang a moving rendition of “suis venu te dire que je m'en vais,” moving Gainsbourg himself to tears https://t.co/VEQ2xXOGSF pic.twitter.com/EWIcbaL6Gg

— Adam Piron (@adam_piron) September 28, 2021

Gainsbourg's hommage became popularly known on X as the favorite French meme, as X^[3] user @breuandrade replied to a tweet saying "What comes to mind when you think of France?" posting Serge video as a reply. The tweet (shown below) garnered over 373,000 views and 5,200 likes in three days.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References