Françoise Hardy

Françoise Madeleine Hardy (; born 17 January 1944) is a French former singer and songwriter. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy has been an important figure in French pop music since her debut, spanning a career of more than fifty years with over thirty studio albums released. She rose to prominence in the early 1960s as a leading figure of the yé-yé wave, a genre of pop music and associated youth culture phenomenon that adapted to French the pop and rock styles that came from the United States and the United Kingdom. The singer differentiated herself from her peers by writing her own material, a rare feat in an industry dominated by older, male composers and producers. France's most exportable female singer of the era, Hardy rose to international fame and released music sung in English, Italian and German, in addition to her native French. She also landed roles as a supporting actress in the films ''Château en Suède'', '' Une balle au cœur'' and the American big-budget production ''Grand Prix'', although she never pursued a serious acting career. In the mid-1960s, she also established herself as a pop and fashion icon with the aid of photographer Jean-Marie Périer, becoming a muse for top designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne. In the English-speaking world, her trendy public image and personal style led her to become an icon for the Swinging London scene, and attracted the admiration of several famous artists. Long after the height of her career in the 1960s, Hardy remains one of the best-selling singers in French history, and continues to be regarded as an iconic and influential figure in both music and fashion. Her work has appeared on several critics' lists.

Born and raised in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, Hardy had a troubled childhood marked by the strict upbringing of her single mother and a largely absent father. As a teenager, she discovered English-language rock and roll performers including Elvis Presley and Brill Building pop acts such as Paul Anka through the radio, and decided to pursue a singing career. Hardy made her musical debut in 1962 on French label Disques Vogue and found immediate success through the hit song " Tous les garçons et les filles", which remains one of her most popular compositions. Disliking the production of her early releases, she began to record in London in 1964, which allowed her to broaden her sound with albums such as ''Mon amie la rose'', '' L'amitié'', '' La maison où j'ai grandi'' and '' Ma jeunesse fout le camp....'' In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hardy sought to assert herself as an artist, although this implied less commercial repercussion. The albums ''Comment te dire adieu'', ''La question'' and '' Message personnel''—released during this period—are among her most influential and critically acclaimed works. In them, Hardy began to work with more renowned songwriters such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara. Between 1977 and 1988, she worked with producer Gabriel Yared in a string of successful albums, including ''Star'', ''Musique saoûle'', ''Gin Tonic'' and ''À suivre''. Her 1988 record ''Décalages'' was widely publicized as Hardy's final album, although she returned eight years later with ''Le danger'', which completely reinvented her sound to a harsher alternative rock. Her following albums of the 2000s—'' Clair-obscur'', ''Tant de belles choses'' and ''(Parenthèses...)''—saw a return to her mellow style.

As a public figure, Hardy is known for her shyness, disenchantment with celebrity life and self-deprecatory attitude—attributed to her lifelong struggles with anxiety and insecurity. In addition to music, Hardy has developed a renowned career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject since the 1970s as a proponent of the "conditionalist" school of thought—outlined by Jean-Pierre Nicola—which rejects the divinatory use of the discipline. Since the 2000s, she has also worked as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction books, including a bestselling autobiography and two essays. Through these works, Hardy has been noted for her frankness in discussing her family life and health problems related to MALT lymphoma and old age, as well as her sometimes controversial political ideas. In 2006, she was awarded the '' Grande médaille de la chanson française'' honorary award given by the Académie française, in recognition of her career in music. In the 2010s, Hardy released her last three albums: ''La pluie sans parapluie'', ''L'amour fou''—released alongside her eponymous first novel in celebration of the 50th anniversary of her music career—and '' Personne d'autre''—which brought her out of a previously declared retirement. She has been married to fellow French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc since 1981 and their only son, Thomas, is also a musician. In 2021, Hardy announced that her health had worsened and that she would not be able to sing again owing to the effects of cancer therapy.

Early life

Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born on 17 January 1944 at the Marie-Louise Clinic in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, in Nazi-occupied France during World War II.Hardy, 2018 008 "One" At the time of her birth, there was an air raid alert in place, with the windows of the clinic "exploding". She has related being born during this violent context with the "abnormally anxious temperament" that she developed as an adult. Her mother Madeleine Hardy, who came from an ordinary background, raised Françoise and her younger sister Michèle—born eighteen months after her—as a single parent.Quinonero, 2017, "«C'est ton enfance / Qui se promène à cloche-pied / Dans ta mémoire..." Her father Étienne Dillard—a married man who came from a much wealthier family—did little to help them financially and was largely an absent figure in their upbringing, only visiting the children a couple of times a year. Madeleine Hardy raised her daughters strictly, in a modest apartment on the 9th arrondissement's Rue d'Aumale street. Hardy had an unhappy and troubled childhood, and mainly engaged in solitary activities like reading, playing with dolls or listening to the radio.Quinonero, 2017, "«Dans mon lit / Je dors, je rêve ou je lis»" At the insistence of their father, the girls went to a Catholic school called Institution La Bruyère, under the tutelage of Trinitarian nuns. The gap of social origin between Hardy and her classmates was a source of permanent humiliation for her. She recalled in her autobiography: "This is most likely where the feeling of shame that has tormented me non-stop since I was a child took root. Everything fell into place: the social status of my parents who I naively believed were divorced, (...) the good sisters' constant complaints that my father was generally a year behind in his payments, and the various differences with the other girls." Her lifelong insecurities were also fuelled by her regular visits to her maternal grandmother in Aulnay-sous-Bois, who "told errepeatedly that hewas unattractive and a very bad person". Between 1952 and 1960, Hardy and her sister were sent every summer to Austria to learn German, encouraged by her mother's new lover, an Austrian baron.Quinonero, 2017, "Les étés autrichiens" As her father played piano, Hardy was encouraged to receive piano lessons as a very young child, from which she quickly dropped out after experiencing stage fright when she was supposed to display her talents onstage at the Salle Gaveau.

A disciplined student, Hardy skipped two years of secondary education and passed her ''baccalauréat'' in 1960 at age sixteen.Hardy, 2018 008 "Two" To mark the occasion, her father asked her what gift she would like and she chose a guitar, with which she began to sing her own melodies. Following her mother's orders, she enrolled in the Paris Institute of Political Studies while still a teenager. Considering it too challenging, she quickly left the institution and joined the Sorbonne to study German. Hardy used the time left from her courses to devote herself to composing songs on her guitar. She began to test her repertoire on the small stage of venue Moka Club, also known as Club des mordus, where she performed every Thursday "in front of an audience of retirees". Around this time, she auditioned for record label Pathé-Marconi after reading an ad in ''France-Soir''. Although she was rejected, Hardy was impressed that she had held the directors' attention for longer than she expected. She also felt encouraged after hearing her recorded voice, which she found "less off-key and tremulous than hefeared". The aspiring singer then went to Philips Records, where she was recommended to take singing lessons. Following this advice, Hardy joined ''Le Petit Conservatoire de la chanson'' in 1961, a school for radio performers—the first of its kind in France—led by singer Mireille Hartuch. Originally launched as a radio program in 1955, the ''Petit Conservatoire'' was turned into a popular TV show beginning in June 1960.Quinonero, 2017, "«Un air de guitare..." When a student gave a satisfactory performance, they were given the chance to release it on the radio, or even perform it again for television. Hartuch—who was known to be very selective—accepted Hardy right away, recalling in 1966: "The first time Françoise entered the classroom to audition, I didn't know if she sang, if she played guitar, what she was doing, I just looked and felt like there was a spark, something that lit up." They developed a "mother-daughter relationship" and a long friendship based on mutual esteem.

Music career

1961–1963: Career breakthrough

On 14 May 1961, Hardy auditioned for the French label Disques Vogue, where was received by directors Serge Goron and Léo Vidaly, who recommended that she take music theory and harmony lessons with a pianist. Her good looks impressed Vogue sound engineer André Bernot—feeling that she "would make a nice record cover"—who offered to teach her some rudiments of music theory in order to improve her sense of rhythm. Bernot later recorded a four-track demo with her, which he submitted to Jacques Wolfsohn, the most influential director at Vogue. At that time, Wolfsohn was looking for a female singer to record "Oh oh chéri", a French-language version of Bobby Lee Trammell's song "Uh Oh". After an audition in person, Wolfsohn immediately offered her a one-year contract, which she signed on 14 November 1961.Quinonero, 2017, "En Vogue" Upon learning of Hardy's new record deal, Mireille Hartuch presented her student at the ''Petit Conservatoire'' TV show on 6 February 1962, in what has been described as "one of the most popular French TV extracts of all time". In a much remembered exchange, the hostess asked the young singer what the English-language "yeah! yeah!" in her lyrics meant, after she performed "La fille avec toi" on her guitar. The transliteration "yé-yé" was later popularized by sociologist Edgar Morin through an article published in ''Le Monde'' on 7 July 1963, in which he analyzed the burgeoning youth-led pop music scene.Briggs, 2015, pp. 14–25 The yé-yé phenomenon was spearheaded by the massively popular radio program '' Salut les copains''—created by Daniel Filipacchi—and a successful magazine of the same name.

Recorded in the spring, Vogue released her first extended play in May 1962, which included "Oh oh chéri" along with her own compositions "Il est parti un jour", "J'suis d'accord" and the sentimental ballad " Tous les garçons et les filles", which despite her wishes was relegated as a B-side because the label deemed it too melancholic for young audiences.Quinonero, 2017, "«Des projets d'avenir»" On 5 June 1962, the singer proudly shared the record sleeve at the ''Petit Conservatoire''. In early October, Hardy filmed a black-and-white music video for "Tous les garçons et les filles" directed by Pierre Badel, which aired on TV show ''Toute la chanson''. The song was chosen at the initiative of Hardy and the show's producer André Salvet, despite Wolfsohn's reluctance to promote it. Hardy was introduced to the large majority of French people on the evening of 28 October 1962, when the clip was rebroadcast during an interlude of the televised results of the presidential election referendum. The exposure propelled the song to widespread popularity among young people—particularly teenage girls—aided by the wide airplay it received by radio stations, starting with youth-favorite Europe n° 1. "Tous les garçons et les filles" was further popularized by a Scopitone music video directed by Claude Lelouch, which shows the singer in an amusement ride alongside two girls whose skirts are lifted up by the wind.Quinonero, 2017, "«Électre en ciré noir»"

Building on the momentum generated by the song's success, Vogue released two more EPs almost simultaneously, which were later compiled along with the first one in a debut studio album commonly known as '' Tous les garçons et les filles''. In France, the LP format was initially viewed with skepticism, so Hardy's first series of albums were compilations of previously released four-track, 7-inch records, a format that was known as "super 45 pm. Most of her full-length records were released without a title and bearing only her name on the cover, coming to be referred to by the title of their most popular song.Quinonero, 2017, "«Question» mythique" Her debut studio album was soon awarded the Trophée de la Télévision, as well as the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque award given by the Académie Charles Cros.Quinonero, 2017, "«À vingt ans / On est les rois du monde»" She later stated: "It would have made me even more happy if I had received it a little later for records better made than this." On 11 May 1962, Hardy made her debut as a live performer alongside other young singers at the Disco Revue gala in Nancy.Quinonero, 2017, "Premières scènes" She performed on Christmas Eve in Brussels and underwent a successful tour in Southern France from late 1962 to early 1963. By early 1963, 500,000 copies of "Tous les garçons et les filles" had been sold in France, which rose to two and a half million in the following months.

Between late 1962 and early 1963, Hardy's singles "J'suis daccord", "Le temps de l'amour" and "Tous les garçons et les filles" topped the French singles' chart. In January 1963, she graced the cover of ''Paris Match'' in a special article devoted to the "new millionaires of song" and she signed a new five-year contract with Vogue, as well as an agreement with Editions Musicales Alpha, created by Wolfsohn. In February 1963, Hardy appeared on TV show ''Cinq colonnes à la une'' alongside Sylvie Vartan and Sheila; they would go on to be considered the three biggest idols of the yé-yé era, each one embodying a different modern girl archetype.Quinonero, 2017, "Les Trois Grâces" On the third of that month, she made her first performance at the prestigious Olympia concert venue in Paris, where she opened for Richard Anthony. Between 26 February and 10 April, Hardy took part in the Gala des Stars concert tour sponsored by Europe n° 1 and ''Salut les copains'', to great success.Quinonero, 2017, "«Gala des étoiles» et concours de l'Eurovision" Between two of the tour's dates, she represented Monaco at the Eurovision Song Contest in London, singing ""; she finished joint fifth with 25 points, level with France's Alain Barrière. "" reached no. 5 in the French charts in June 1963. In October, Hardy released her second studio album '' Le premier bonheur du jour''.Quinonero, 2017, "La vie de tournée" That month, she received the "Youth" Edison Award at the Grand Gala du Disque in Scheveningen, Netherlands. She was handed the trophy by author Godfried Bomans, who praised her as a "creative artist" that knew how to impose "a personal style without trying to imitate the Americans". Between 7 November and 18 December 1963, Hardy once again performed as Anthony's opening act at the Olympia and was well received by the press, who had hitherto criticized her stiff live performances.Quinonero, 2017, "Suivre sa voie"

As a leading figure of the yé-yé craze, Hardy found herself at the forefront of the French music scene and became the country's most exportable female singer. Beginning in 1963, translated re-recordings of "Tous les garçons et les filles" began to be exported to Italian, German and English-speaking markets.Quinonero, 2017, "«LA FENÊTRE OUVERTE SUR LE MONDE... ne vaut pas celle fermée sur mon amour...»" The first foreign-language country where the singer found success was Italy, where the song became "Quelli della mia età" and sold 255,000 copies, topping the singles' chart between April and October and dropping to second place between July and August, behind Rita Pavone's "Cuore".Quinonero, 2017, "«Dans quel pays vous cachez-vous?»" At the end of the summer, she recorded new songs in Milan, which were included in the Italian release '' Françoise Hardy canta per voi in italiano''. The single "L'età dell'amore" / "E all'amore che penso" also topped the Italian charts. On 11 October, Hardy performed in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the fourth Great Gala of the Sedería Española. In November 1963, she embarked on her first Italian tour, which mostly visited small coastal towns. The singer was also successful in Portugal and travelled to Lisbon in late 1963 to appear in several TV shows.

1964–1968: International stardom

At the peak of the British Invasion phenomenon, Hardy sought to modernize her music,Quinonero, 2017, "«Des façons Londres de me promettre Corfou»" opting to leave the poor quality of French studios and sound engineers to go record her songs at Pye Records' studios in London.Deluxe, 2013. p. 60 Working with producer Tony Hatch in February 1964, she recorded an EP that included a cover of "Catch a Falling Star" and three adaptations of her hits: "Find Me a Boy" ("Tous les garçons et les filles"), "Only Friends" ("Ton meilleur ami") and "I Wish It Were Me" ("J'aurais voulu"). On 21 February, she promoted "Catch a Falling Star" on TV show ''Ready Steady Go!'' English audiences initially preferred her recordings in French, with "Tous les garçons et les filles" entering the UK Singles Chart on 1 July 1964 at number thirty-six.

Her 1965 English-language single " All Over the World" was a substantial hit in the United Kingdom, reaching the Top 20 and staying in the charts for fifteen weeks. It was also successful in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, probably being her most popular recording among English-speaking audiences. She promoted the song with performances on the British TV shows ''Ready Steady Go!'', ''Ollie and Fred's Five O'Clock Club'', '' Thank Your Lucky Stars'' and ''Top of the Pops''.Quinonero, 2017, "«Dans le monde entier»"

In 1965, Hardy flew to New York City to sign a record deal with Kapp, allowing them to distribute her records in the United States. The label released her debut studio album under the title ''The "Yeh-Yeh" Girl From Paris!'', as well as the single "However Much"—an English-language version of the previously released track "Et même..." While in the United States, Hardy made her first appearance in American television in NBC's program '' Hullabaloo'', where she performed "However Much", a bilingual version of Charles Trenet's "Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?" and a rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema".

The singer became famous overnight in Germany after her 28 April 1965 appearance on TV show ''Portrait in Musik'', in a series of staged musical performances directed by Truck Branss. Shortly after, the album '' In Deutschland'' was released, which, in addition to containing translated versions of her previous songs, included five original compositions. Her most popular track in Germany was "Frag' den Abendwind", which remained in the national singles' chart for twenty-four weeks.

Pressured by her French and Italian record companies, Hardy took part in the Sanremo Music Festival 1966, where she reached the finals with the Edoardo Vianello-penned song "Parlami di te".

On 12 April 1966, Hardy was among the forty-six performers that took part in the famous group photograph shot by Jean-Marie Périer for ''Salut Les Copains'', which became a symbol of the yé-yé era and came to be known in France as the "photo of the century" (French: "''photo du siècle''").

Beginning in late 1967, Hardy began to release her records under her own production company Asparagus, although Vogue continued to distribute them.Quinonero, 2017, "Septième album" She later regretted this decision, recalling in 1999: "Wolfsohn had sensed that the singers were going to want to be more and more independent. So it was he himself who suggested that I create a production house. At first I was very seduced, then I realized that it was a trap: the CEO of Vogue, Léon Cabat, was also in this production company and, between them, owned the majority of the shares. This has given rise to a lot of harassment, lawsuits." Her seventh French studio album '' Ma jeunesse fout le camp...''—the first one produced under Asparagus—was released in November 1967.

Hardy gave her last three live performances in Kinshasa, Congo during June 1967.Quinonero, 2017, "«En anglais»"

On the advice of English producer Noel Rodgers, Hardy recorded her second English-language album in the spring of 1968, known variously as ''En anglais'', ''The Second English Album'', ''Will You Love Me Tomorrow'' and ''Loving'', depending on the country.

1969–1976: Transition to artistic maturity

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hardy sought to assert herself as an artist, although this implied less commercial repercussion than that which she had achieved with Disques Vogue. In 1970, the singer definitively broke up with the label and signed a three-year contract with Sonopresse, a subsidiary of Hachette.Quinonero, 2017, "Double changement de domicile" She also created a new production company—called Hypopotam—and founded her own music publishing company—Kundalini. Hardy received high advances from Sonopresse, which allowed her to finance her own projects. She has described this period as "the happiest time", as she was now able to work independently on her music endeavours. This transitional period in her career was kicked off by the 1970 publication of several compilation albums—including the French release ''Françoise''—as well as the studio albums '' One-Nine-Seven-Zero''—recorded in English—and ''Träume'', her last German-language release.

Her first French studio album produced under Hypopotam was ''Soleil'', released in the spring of 1970. It featured a wide array of arrangers, including Bernard Estardy, Jean-Claude Vannier, Jean-Pierre Sabar, Mick Jones, Saint-Preux, Simon Napier-Bell and Tommy Brown from Nero and the Gladiators. In the summer of 1970, Hardy released her penultimate Italian-language single "Lungo il mare", written by Giuseppe Torrebruno, Luigi Albertelli