IRM is the third studio album by French electropop singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, with all songs written and produced by Beck except "Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes" (written by Jean-Pierre Ferland). The album title was inspired by the French acronym for a MRI scanner. The title track was released as a free download on 9 October 2009. The album was mostly recorded at Beck's home studio in Los Angeles, California. The lead single is "Heaven Can Wait", a duet with Beck, and was released on 2 November. The music video for "Heaven Can Wait" was directed by Keith Schofield and was released on 19 November 2009. The video for "Heaven Can Wait" was named one of the Top 20 best music videos of 2009 by Spin Magazine. "Trick Pony" is featured in the football video game FIFA 11.

The album currently has a Metacritic score of 80/100 based on 21 professional reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

On 13 April 2010, Gainsbourg released a four-track EP called Sunset Sound EP, which contains four songs from IRM recorded live at Sunset Sound Recorders with Beck Hansen.

Irma Thomas (born February 18, 1941,Ponchatoula, Louisiana, United States) is an American singer from New Orleans. She is known as the "Soul Queen of New Orleans".

Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, but never experienced their level of commercial success; still, she has a large cult following among soul aficionados. In 2007, she won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album for After the Rain, her first Grammy in a career spanning over 50 years.

Born Irma Lee, as a teen she sang with a Baptist church choir, auditioning for Specialty Records as a 13-year old. By the age of 19 she had been married twice and had four children. Keeping her second ex-husband's surname, she worked as a waitress in New Orleans, occasionally singing with bandleader Tommy Ridgley, who helped her land a record deal with the local Ron label. Her first single, "(You Can Have My Husband but) Don't Mess with My Man," was released in spring 1960, and reached number 22 on the Billboard R&B chart.

An album may be understood as a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution, however the concept is found in printed music dating into the early nineteenth century in works by composers such as Schumann and Mendelssohn. The word derives from the Latin word for list.

Today, with the vinyl record no longer being used as the primary form of distribution, the term "album" can still be applied to any sound recording collection, such as those on compact disc, MiniDisc, Compact audio cassette, and digital or MP3 albums.Cover art is also considered an integral part of the album. Many albums also come with liner notes and inserts giving background information or analysis of the recording, reprinted lyrics, images of the performers, or additional artwork and text. These are now often found in the form of CD booklets.

Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album. If a pop or rock album contained tracks released separately as commercial singles, these were often traditionally placed in particular positions on the album. A common configuration was to have the album led off by the second and third singles, followed by a ballad. The first single would lead off side 2. In the past many singles (such as the Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Bob Dylan's "Positively 4th Street") did not appear on albums, but others (such as the Beatles' "Come Together" and Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone") were part of an album released concurrently. Today, many commercial albums of music tracks feature one or more singles, which are released separately to radio, TV or the Internet as a way of promoting the album. Albums have also been issued that are compilations of older tracks not originally released together, such as singles not originally found on albums, b-sides of singles, or unfinished "demo" recordings.

Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg (born 21 July 1971) is an Anglo-French actress and singer. After releasing an album with her father at the age of fifteen, more than twenty years passed before she released three albums as an adult (5:55, IRM and Stage Whisper) to commercial and critical success. Gainsbourg has also appeared in many films, including several directed by Lars von Trier, and has received both a César Award and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award. She is the daughter of British actress Jane Birkin and French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg.

Gainsbourg was born in London to Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg and was raised in Paris. Her maternal grandmother was actress Judy Campbell and her uncle is the screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who directed her in The Cement Garden. She attended École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel in Paris and Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil in Switzerland.

Gainsbourg's longtime partner is French-Israeli actor/director Yvan Attal, with whom she has three children: a son, Ben (born on 12 June 1997) and daughters Alice (born on 8 November 2002) and Joe (born on 16 July 2011).