Thinking of Françoise Hardy
Photograph by Jean-Marie Périer
If France Gall was the ultimate wind-up doll, Sylvie Vartan the fun-loving girl about town and Sheila the good-natured girl next door, then Françoise was the older, wiser sister, happy to let her (long, straight) hair down when the time was right but otherwise content to watch the world, standing (in the latest fashionable attire) slightly apart, off to one side, looking on as the parade passed by
Thinking of Françoise Hardy
Gareth Jones is a music connoisseur and the author of the book “French Pop: from Music Hall to Yé-Yé”
Although billed during a series of London shows at the Palladium Theatre as “the yé-yé girl from Paris” (also the title of her first American album), Françoise actually had little in common with her peers. Yé-yé was (usually) bouncy, infectious, full of fun, brimming with zest and shot through with joie de vivre. Hardy’s music, by contrast, always seemed to be seeped in melancholy, calmer, more reflective, better suited to an evening of quiet contemplation than to a boisterous teenage party.
On the back cover of 1964’s Another Side Of Bob Dylan, the great singer-songwriter placed a number of poems, of which the second began, simply, “For Françoise Hardy”. For American fans perusing the record sleeve, it was probably the first time they had ever seen or heard the name of one of France’s greatest recording stars, although Dylan being Dylan, he never bothered to explain who she was. British music buyers already knew the answer – two years out from her first hit record, the young chanteuse was already a regular visitor to U.K. television screens and had even cracked the local top forty with ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’, a plaintive wallflower lament, sung in French, no less, that stood out amidst the flash and noise of the beat groups otherwise dominating the airwaves. It was quite an achievement.
Although billed during a series of London shows at the Palladium Theatre as “the yé-yé girl from Paris” (also the title of her first American album), Françoise actually had little in common with her peers. Yé-yé was (usually) bouncy, infectious, full of fun, brimming with zest and shot through with joie de vivre. Hardy’s music, by contrast, always seemed to be seeped in melancholy, calmer, more reflective, better suited to an evening of quiet contemplation than to a boisterous teenage party. For sure, she loved rock ‘n’ roll, and the sound of the American girl groups, and she would make some very good records in exactly that style with U.K. producer Charles Blackwell (‘Et même’, ‘Je veux qu’il revienne’) but still, there was always something different about her. If France Gall was the ultimate wind-up doll, Sylvie Vartan the fun-loving girl about town and Sheila the good-natured girl next door, then Françoise was the older, wiser sister, happy to let her (long, straight) hair down when the time was right but otherwise content to watch the world, standing (in the latest fashionable attire) slightly apart, off to one side, looking on as the parade passed by.
It has to be said that she wore clothes like a dream – and having Salut Les Copains in-house photographer Jean-Marie Périer as a boyfriend didn’t hurt either. Her frequent fashion shoots – not just for the teenage press but for style magazines the world over – have become classic images of the Swinging Sixties: the metallic, Paco Raban dress; the casual pose with Mick Jagger; the famous shot on the swing, with a faraway look in her eyes… Françoise may not have been a classic beauty – Brigitte Bardot had that market sewn up, anyway – but there was undeniably something about her that caught the eye, then the ear and finally the heart. Moving on from Périer, from 1967 she formed a dream couple with the arch-cynical singer Jacques Dutronc (they eventually married), offering a cool and classy alternative to the mass-market appeal of the Johnny Hallyday-Sylvie Vartan tandem. Add in a handful of select film appearances (Château en Suède, Grand Prix, What’s New Pussycat) and it is little wonder that she became and remains an icon for an era that refuses to fade away.
Of course, there was more to her appeal than wistful melancholia draped in the latest mod fashion. After all, her 1964 release ‘Je n’attends plus personne’ featured some of the best fuzz guitar of any French recording of the era. In truth, rather than sticking with the stripped-back sound of her debut album (with which, she later claimed, she was disappointed), she indulged in any number of musical settings over the years, from the dancefloor grooves of 1968’s ‘Comment te dire adieu’ (with lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg) through the soaring orchestration of the same year’s ‘Parlez-moi de lui’ to the funky soul of 1978’s ‘Occupé’ and the atmospheric, synth-heavy sounds of her 1988 album Décalages. But that sense of sadness always remained, floating over the pop-psych sounds of ‘Je fais des puzzles’ (1969) and the eerie, mystical ‘Bown, bown, bown’ (1972) alike. Even when she switched languages (during her first decade, she regularly recorded in English, German and Italian as well as French), her downbeat personality dominated the records, whether on her own ‘Only Friends’ (1964) or on 1971’s cover of Neil Young’s ‘Till The Morning Comes’. Her willingness to sing in multiple languages certainly helped her to find a global audience: according to Billboard, in 1963, she was the eighth biggest-selling singer in the world.
Although her recording career stretched for over 45 years (albeit with the occasional hiatus), for the majority of fans, it is the work she did in her first decade that resonates the most. Part of this is nostalgia – who among us does not retain a fondness for the records of our adolescence – but that does not explain the appeal to those who were not even born when her classic EPs and LPs were first released. The fact is that Françoise cut some of the best pop records of the sixties, from her early flurry of gentle, lightly-rocking ballads (1962’s ‘C’est à l’amour auquel je pense’ and ‘Le temps de l’amour’, the Eurovision entry ‘L’amour s’en va’ (for Monaco) and 1963’s ‘Le premier bonheur du jour’, later covered by Brazilian tropicalistas Os Mutantes) to her wistful reworking of Adriano Celentano’s ‘Il ragazzo della via Gluck’ (‘La maison où j’ai grandi’) and the sublime Technicolor marvel of ‘Je changerais d’avis’ (a cover of Mina’s ‘Se telefonado’) – both released in 1966 – to one of this writer’s personal favourites, ‘Voilà’ (1967) to the end of decade wonder ‘L’heure bleue’ and 1970’s ‘Point’.
Not only that, but she also wrote – or co-wrote much of her own material, culminating in her 1971 masterpiece, La question. A collaboration with the under-appreciated Brazilian singer-songwriter Tuca, this was an exquisite suite of songs drenched in the sound of Tuca’s homeland but far more than just a case of “Françoise does Brazil”. The lyrics – dark, sensual, drawn from some dark place, deep down inside – were among her best, while her vocal performance was sublime, by turns erotic, mournful, teasing, downcast and, yes, melancholic. A finely-chiselled jewel fit to stand comparison with Joni Mitchell’s Blue or Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, the record sold poorly at the time, although over the years it has become acclaimed as the classic that it is and it remained her personal favourite of all her works (mine too, for what it is worth).
Françoise continued to record during the seventies and eighties, although as she later recalled in her (excellent) autobiography, she became increasingly dissatisfied with, and detached from, the results. Sacrificing artistic control for major label security, she found herself increasingly reliant on others for material, and while this could and sometimes did produce worthwhile results (‘Message personnel’ (1973), the interesting concept album L’entracte (1974), 1978’s ‘J’écoute la musique saoule’), she rightly felt that the albums were patchy affairs. The reality was that she was distracted by becoming a mother (Thomas Dutronc was born in 1973) and having already ceased performing live in 1968, she would dutifully promote each of her releases on television before retiring to her home and devoting herself to her son, to astrology and to other, less frenetic pastimes, eventually walking away from show business altogether at the end of the eighties.
Happily, she would be coaxed out of retirement by a new generation of performers who drew inspiration from her classic work. Guest appearances on records by Blur, Air and Malcolm McLaren encouraged her to start again, resulting in the indie rock flavoured Le danger (1996). That initial comeback album aside, her final recordings saw a return to the gentle, wistful sound that had made her a star, albeit with more sophisticated arrangements. The end of the century Clair-obscur album was a major success, spawning a hit duet with Dutronc on a revival of the decades-old ‘Vous qui passez sans me voir’, and was the first in an excellent series of five albums that effectively brought her career full circle. The series closed with 2018’s Personne d’autre, which dealt honestly with the question of mortality and the health issues that would eventually take her life. Unable to record again, Françoise spent her final years alternately campaigning in favour of assisted dying and enjoying the success of her son Thomas, an excellent jazz guitarist in the style of the great manouche player, Django Reinhardt, and a successful singer and performer into the bargain.
Although Françoise was known to have been ill for some time, the news this week of her passing still came as a heavy blow to her legion of fans, this writer included. Fan sites, Facebook pages and internet chat rooms have been awash with the shared memories of her followers, Spotify and Apple Music report huge surges in streaming activity and, no doubt, those few record stores still in business will soon be reporting a run on her records and CDs too. And not just in France – lest we forget, Françoise Hardy was a global star, with hit records from Germany to Brazil, from Sweden to South Africa, from Spain to Japan, from Italy to Australia. Modest to a fault, Françoise was never one to blow her own trumpet and could often be quite disparaging about her recorded legacy, but in this, at least, she was wrong. At her best, she created a body of work fit to stand comparison with that of any of the great names from pop’s golden era, work that continues to enchant, to touch, and to move listeners in a way that was uniquely hers. She will be sorely missed.
Françoise Hardy. 1944-2025. Rest in peace.
Watch Françoise Hardy performing “Comment Te Dire Adieu” in 1969
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