Oh! Pardon tu dormais -

"An emotional tour de force from an artist who has never gotten her musical due outside of France ... Birkin's name will forever be linked to the songs [Serge] Gainsbourg composed for her (...), leaving her better known as an interpreter than a songwriter in her own right. But the lyrics on a song like "Cigarettes," which addresses her daughter's death to the tune of a haunting cabaret waltz, are both raw and poetic ... Birkin's voice, too, is in immaculate form (...); her performance here is understated and full of character, emotion pooling in every carefully enunciated syllable ... Like Bob Dylan's late-period masterpiece "Rough and Rowdy Ways" or Marianne Faithfull's devastating 2018 album "Negative Capability", "Oh! Pardon tu dormais..." is weary but never resigned, battle-scarred but never defeated, a work of personal reckoning marked by a frantic desire to connect, as our time slips away. None of us can cheat death; but to face it with Birkin's fortitude and poetic skill is to score a minor victory".

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"Career peak for a woman forever unfairly standing in the shadows of the men she inspired ... If there are reminders of "Histoire De Melody Nelson" or "L'Homme À Tête De Chou" here, it's because they have been our experience of her life ... Arguably, though, Serge [Gainsbourg] barely exists on "Oh! Pardon...", with Birkin writing in French and English, allowing the listener to decide to whom she's singing ... She has made the album of her life".