Serge Gainsbourg died on March 2, 1991, a month shy of his 63rd birthday. Though characterized as a womanizing alcoholic, the iconoclastic Frenchman always thought of himself as a homely little Jewish piano player who never asked to be a star, but as long as he was one then you had to accept him for what he was.

Gainsbourg's early recordings were standard cabaret chanson, but in the '60s he began incorporating everything under the sun into his quirky songs: calypso, surf music, smoky jazz. Late in the decade he pioneered a kind of cut-and-paste pop that prefigured hip-hop. "Initials B.B.," an ode to the actress who shared his bed, was a cinematic march with chanting chorines; and his masterpiece, "Bonnie and Clyde," which he sang as a shaky call-and-response with Brigitte Bardot herself, could have been sampled (that weird hoot in the back).

Most of the available comps concentrate on this period since it's considered his prime. "Gainsbourg Forever," a new 43-track retrospective has all the important stuff as well as his best chanson from the '50s and his perversely provocative records from the '70s and '80s, including "Requiem pour un con," the first drum 'n' bass song; and "Sea, Sex and Sun," which is like Tom Waits fronting the Cardigans. And if you think "Je t'aime moi non plus" is racy, get a load of the girl gulping for air on "Je suis venu dire que je me'en vais," or the animal cries that liven up "Love on the Beat." We won't even discuss "Lemon Incest," a duet with daughter Charlotte.