RIP Françoise Hardy

The French singer-songwriter, queen of sad songs, died at 80.

From a very young age, Françoise Hardy has been writing sincere and melancholic songs. She was the ultimate icon of the yé-yé movement, revered in France as well as the rest of the world. Shying away from the stage after a few years, she remained a hard worker in the studio: Hardy released 28 albums and timeless hits. Let me tell you her story.

Stories of Boys and Girls

Born during an air raid, a few months before the Liberation of Paris, the young Françoise grew up in a small two-room apartment in the ninth arrondissement of Paris, with her mother, an accountant, and her sister. Her father, the bastard, was an already-married bourgeois who ignored his daughter for most of his life. Even before her career took off, Françoise was already obsessed with popular music, hanging out in record stores, looking for rare UK records. At 16, she received her first guitar and started writing songs. A year goes by, she keeps trying to audition and in November 1961, she finally signs a contract with Vogue.

Vogue, at this time, is not a fashion magazine. It’s a record label based in Paris and created a couple of years after the war by a trio of dudes including Charles Delaunay, a resistant who ran a jazz club during the nazi occupation. Specialized in Jazz at first, and making most of money by distributing UK bands in France, Vogue’s legacy mostly remains as the record label who started the career of many figures of the yé-yé movement including the notorious Johnny Halliday, Pierre Perret, Petula Clark and of course Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy’s future husband. 

From the very beginning, she was set to become a star. After only a year of writing songs, she made her first TV appearance. Now, you have to understand that Françoise Hardy, barely 18, is already exceptionally beautiful. Her magnetic presence is compensating for minimal guitar skills ; her voice, despite her shyness, is clear and above anything else, the song, written by Hardy herself, talks to the youth of her times. Everything is already there. 

Around this time, Françoise Hardy met the photographer Jean-Marie Périer, who worked for the news magazine Paris Match, and will later be hired by Salut Les Copains, the iconic tabloid. An idyll will quickly develop between the two young artists who bounded through a similar family history: Périer is also the hidden son of a father who had an affair with his mother: the singer Henri Salvador. Wild.

Françoise Hardy's destiny was tied with French history: on October 28th 1962, while France was waiting the result of the constitutional referendum that will allow our president to be elected by direct citizen vote, she will perform on national television Tous les garçons et les filles [trad: All the boys and girls], an absolute banger.

Fun fact: this cute scopitone is directed by Claude Lelouch. I confess I use “banger” a lot in this newsletter, but this is arguably her most famous song in France. At least it was until Le temps de l’amour [trad: the time of love] experienced a renaissance after Wes Anderson put it in his best movie, Moonrise Kingdom. 

 You can find those two hits plus a bunch of other simple yet beautiful ballads in her first album released in 1962. At the time, France’s music industry didn’t really care for album titles so her first LPs were just named Françoise Hardy. After reedition, the LPs will be identified with the names of their first songs: Tous les garçons et les filles in 1962 and Le petit bonheur du jour [trad: the small happiness of the day] in 1963. With her second album, her music’s scope (and budget) is expanding with the additions of a full orchestra and choir to back her vocal performance, including a beautiful cover of a Burt Bacharach’s song. 

L’idole des jeunes

The meteoric rise to fame continues: in 1963, she sell a million copies of her first single, she performs in the Eurovision song contest (for Monaco) and she’s already invited on the stage of the Olympia, our most famous music hall, with Richard Anthony, another figure of the yé-yé movement. It wouldn't last long before Françoise Hardy’s fame reached other countries. Italy first with a couple of Italian versions. And finally, the UK. 

Françoise Hardy was obviously a fashion icon, dressed by the biggest names : Yves Saint-Laurent, Paco Rabanne, etc. In the 60’s, you could recognize her style very easily with her miniskirt, her bangs and her white boots. Because she can do everything she wants, she’s also a movie star but I won’t talk too much about it. 

1967 was a pivotal year. Her best record, Ma jeunesse fout le camp [trad: My youth is slipping away], is fully participating in the psychedelic Summer of Love of 1967, mixing her ethereal voice with the best influences from UK, including an orchestra led by Charles Blackwell and none other than John Paul Jones, a year before creating Led Zeppelin. In 67, Françoise Hardy already launched her own publishing company, Asparagus, and bought a house in Corsica, where she gets to hang with Jacques Dutronc.

David Bowie famously said that he was “passionately in love” with Françoise Hardy (“like every male in the world, and a number of females”). Stories of Hardy being the most sought-after young woman emerged decades later, from Jimmy Page to the Rolling Stones. But, you can’t beat a good looking charismatic band leader like Dutronc. Together they had a son in 1973, Thomas Dutronc, also a singer. They only got married in 1981 after 14 years of relationship. And even after their separation, they never divorced and continued to talk and even work together. That’s French love, especially because Dutronc had a shit-ton of mistresses and Hardy wrote a shit-on of songs about it (even a full concept album about the story of a cheated woman in 1974). 

At the end of the sixties, she had already released 9 albums, including two in English. This period will be known as her Vogue years on a myriad of compilations. Ironically, Françoise Hardy was fighting against Vogue for the rights of her songs (and it’s important to remember she wrote most of them) and lost. Too bad Taylor Swift wasn’t around. Fun fact: this next song was written by Serge Gainsbourg.

Sun in Capricorn

I already went too deep in Françoise Hardy’s lore but I can’t stop. For example: after the crisis with Vogue, she got tired of performing on stage and became obsessed with astrology. So much so that it could be easily considered as a second career. While she kept releasing music with consistency, success wasn’t always there every time, but a couple of records sold better than the other. In 1971, she released a gorgeous bossa nova-adjacent record, La question [trad: The question], with the Brazilian musician Tuca. And, two years later, it’s Message personnel [trad: Personal message], co-written with Michel Berger, forever in the pantheon of la variété française.

During the disco era, Michel Jonasz had the crazy idea to make her sing on funky tracks on a trio of albums, including, in 1978, J’écoute de la musique saoule [trad: I listen to music drunk]. It’s a small success but Françoise Hardy couldn’t care less : “I only like sad songs” she declared in 1982. 

Finally, in 1988, after 26 years of career and 21 albums, she decided to briefly quit music (like Lil’ Wayne), probably burnt out. She will continue to write songs for others and will appear on other people's albums as a guest. In parallel, she remained a full-time astrologer with a bunch of books under a name and a famous daily show on French radio. 

Hardynaissance

Less than a decade later, she came back (like Lil’ Wayne), with a rock album called Le Danger [trad: The Danger]. Success is finally coming back in 2000 with the release of her 23rd album, Clair Obscur [trad: Chiaroscuro], that finally includes a duet with her husband Jacques Dutronc. This record is also the first to feature her son, Thomas Dutronc, who plays the guitar (he’s a big fan of Django Reinhardt). 

That’s the beginning of the Hardynaissance where she started selling records again, for which she received several awards (including the Victoire de la Musique for female artist of the year in 2013). Like any snob, I’m not well-versed in Hardy’s later works, but the sad songs are still there. Also, she was a big supporter of right-wing ideas and candidates. In parallel, young people started to discover her music again, thanks to Wes Anderson, but also the internet. She’s always been a secret artist to be passed on, with tapes or playlists.

More time passed and she became more elusive, retreated in her house in Corsica. Affected by multiple cancers and diseases for more than 20 years, she was a strong advocate for legalizing euthanasia. You can read more about it at the end of The Guardian’s obituary. She sadly succumbed from her fight against cancer rather than leaving peacefully on her own terms. Now she can truly rest in peace.