Françoise Hardy, the Flemish chanson singer, songwriter, style” It Girl” and sweetheart of the 1960s “yé- yé” European music movement, has died. She was 80.
Her death was announced Tuesday on Instagram by her brother, Thomas Dutronc, who wrote,” Maman est politique”—” Mom is gone” in European — without specifying when or where she died. Hardy said in 2004 that she’d been diagnosed with cancer.
A superstar in Paris by the time she turned 20, Hardy released her debut single,” Tous les Garçons et les Filles” (” All the Boys and Girls” ), in 1962. Across the following years, she issued more than 30 studio songs, a body of work that was recently interrupted by a late 1980s pension.
Although Hardy was not well known in America because she sang most of her songs in her native tongue, she was a household name there thanks to her gentle distribution and minor-key lyricism. She followed her first hit with” Le Temps de L’amour” (” The Time of Love” ), which featured spacious, echoed production that captured the spirit of Gene Pitney’s sessions with Phil Spector. Songs including” La Maison Où J’ai Grandi” (” The House Where I Grew Up” ) and” Comment te Dire Adieu” (” How to Say Goodbye to You” ) pondered the absence of love and, once present, the futility of keeping it.
” In songs, I like above all the slow, sad sounds, that stir the weapon in the scar. Never in a way that spirals, but in a way that enhances”, Hardy said, according to Frédéric Quinonero’s 2017 history. ” I nevertheless aspire to find the terrible music that will bring tears to my eye. A sound whose superior gives it a spiritual dimension”.
In a 1967 Reuters article that described her as” France’s hot long-haired, mini-skirted singing idol,” Hardy drew on her abilities as a writer and speaker to create such straightforward information into the light. She was frequently dismissed as an artist at the time according to her gender and beauty. Her appearance and personality, however, did draw the attention of players for as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones ‘ Brian Jones and the European song Jacques Dutronc.
Many baby boomer music fans, in fact, learned of Hardy not through song but by reading a Dylan poem on the back of his 1964 album,” Another Side of Bob Dylan”, where the seemingly smitten Minnesota bard wrote ( in lowercase ),” for françoise hardy / at the seine’s edge/ a giant shadow/ of notre dame/ seeks t’ grab my foot/ sorbonne students / whirl by on thin bicycles…”
Hardy tapped her singing and songwriting victory from the early 1960s to become a well-known style image, expert, and published writer. As the decades progressed, her goddess pushed her away from the economically driven yé- yé tone toward roll- focused psychedelia, folk- stone and calm adult pop.
” From when she was 18, she knew she was diverse”, manufacturer Erick Benzi, who collaborated with Hardy for two years,  , told Uncut , in 2018. She was capable of telling a big artist like Charles Aznavour,” Your song is crap, I do n’t want to sing it.” She always made agreements”.
Born on January 17, 1944, Hardy was conceived through an encounter between her family and a little older, well-to-do wedded man, who had been conducting an air attack during the final months of Germany’s occupation of France during World War II. Her only sibling, sister Michele, arrived a year later.
Despite having a father with higher social status and excellent academic performance, Hardy experienced adulthood like her middle-class peers. At one point as a teen, she recalled in her 2008 memoir,” The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles” ( published in the U. S. in 2018 ), “my mother and I conjured up all the realistic careers open to me: executive secretary, medical secretary, nurse, pharmacist”. She continued,” In secret, I was fostering the desire to find an activity that had some connections to the musical style I had recently fallen for.”
When she was a teenager, as a reward for academic success, Hardy’s mother and father offered her a gift of her own choosing. Before choosing the latter, she waved between a radio and a guitar. ” I will never know why I chose a guitar because a transistor radio was all I ever wanted”, she , told , the Guardian. ” My future life would flow out of this important decision because, once I had this priceless instrument in my hands, I started scratching out three chords over which I sang snatches of my own melodies.”
Alongside peers including Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall and Sylvie Vartan, Hardy ascended to become a yé- yé hitmaker in her native Paris, drawing the attention of jet- setting pop stars, tastemakers and fashionistas from London, New York and Tokyo. As with other yé- yé singers, Hardy’s music blended mid- 1960s bubblegum pop, groovy guitar lines and France’s romantic chanson tradition to create sticky- sweet love songs.
Hardy first visited Los Angeles in 1968 to record her English- language album” En Anglais” (” In English” )— although she had appeared onscreen at the Cinerama Dome two years earlier in John Frankenheimer’s race car movie” Grand Prix”— but never seemed too concerned with stateside success. It did n’t help that she suffered from stage fright.
Her commanding demeanor attracted the attention of Paris ‘ fashion scene, and she became a muse for designers like Emmanuelle Khanh, André Courrèges, and Yves Saint Laurent. Current Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquière called Hardy” the very essence of French style”, a trait apparent in the cover photos of Hardy’s first four albums, which were shot by fashion photographer ( and then- boyfriend ) Jean- Marie Périer.
” My songs had little interest compared to the Anglo- Saxon production. So I made sure to dress well every time I traveled to London or New York,” she said, calling herself “above all a fashion ambassador.”
Hardy and Jacques Dutronc started a romantic relationship that would last the rest of their lives in the late 1960s. Their son, Thomas Dutronc, now a successful French singer, was born in 1973, and Hardy raised him as she continued to release some of her most expansive albums. The title track to ‘ 73’s” Message Personnel” (” Personal Message” ) is a gentle exploration of unrequited love and unspoken emotions lush with orchestral arrangements.
Hardy and Dutronc married in 1981 — purely for fiscal reasons, both stressed — but separated in 1988. Despite entering into other relationships, they never divorced and remained close. Her extended family life was tragic in some ways. According to Hardy’s memoir, in 1981 her father, with whom she had had little contact, was killed in his home by a male prostitute. As she also conveyed in her memoir, in the mid- 2000s, her sister, who had long struggled with mental illness, died. Although the cause of her sister’s suicide was not officially established by the police investigation, Hardy attributed it to suicide.
With her commercial success, Hardy had the opportunity and time to fully explore her creative potential, and one of her main interests was astrology. She immersed herself in the various schools of thought after being introduced to the belief system in the 1960s, and she eventually studied with French author Jean- Pierre Nicola. She eventually became the daily horoscope reader on Radio Monte Carlo, using her fame to support his methods. She released her astrology book” Les Rythmes du Zodiaque” (” Rhythms of the Zodiac” ) in 2003.
Hardy published her first work of fiction,” L’Amour Fou” (” Crazy Love” ) in 2012. Its success kept her writing, and it was written as a companion to an album of the same name. Two books of essays followed in 2015 and 2016.
Hardy’s statements on politics drew ire from French liberals in 2012 when she stated that if Socialist Party candidate François Hollande were able to initiate his proposed 75 % tax on millionaires, Hardy would “have to sell my apartment”, adding,” I’ll be on the street”.
Hardy spent time allowing a new generation of listeners to hear her recordings once more. She continued to release albums and collaborate with others for the rest of her life, appearing on a remix of the Britpop band Blur’s 1994 song” To the End.” Her first four albums were reissued by the reputable archival label Light in the Attic in 2015. An updated version of Hardy’s early hit” Le Temps de L’amour” was released by Bon Entendeur and the French house group Bon Entendeur in 2021.
” No one can sing like Françoise”, Iggy Pop said in 1997 as he and Hardy were promoting their version of” I’ll Be Seeing You”. Her emotional and musical precision combined with her sense of reserve and mystique leave a lasting impression on the listener. There’s no one else as good around”.
” It has always been a big surprise to me that people, even very good musicians, were moved by my voice”, Hardy told the Guardian. ” I know its limitations, I always have. But I have chosen carefully. What a person sings expresses who they are. Fortunately, I do n’t find happiness in songs to be the most beautiful. The songs we remember are the sad, romantic songs”.
In 2018, Hardy was found to have a malignant tumor in her ear, which she survived lymphatic cancer in the middle of the 2000s. Later that year, she explained her situation , in an email , to the French magazine Femme Actuelle:” My physical suffering has already been so terrible that I am afraid that death will force me to go through even more physical suffering”.
She argued on behalf of her right to die, saying that it is not up to doctors to grant each patient’s request but rather to reduce the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes intolerable.
Her plight seemed to be in line with the themes of her music for an artist who has a passion for the ways people deal with grief and sadness.
” I sing about death in a very symbolic and even upbeat way.” There is an acceptance there, too”, she told the Guardian. I can sing about that one very special train that will take me out of this world, even at my own age. However, I’m also hoping that it will send me to the stars and enable me to discover the mystery of the cosmos.
Her husband and their son are also in Hardy’s care.
___
© 2024 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
