In the 1960s, French yé-yé pop stars had a particular shtick. They were teenage girls, dressed up in bows and baby doll dresses, singing flirty songs about love and adolescence penned typically by adult male songwriters. France Gall sang of swallowing "lollipops", Chantal Kelly sang of telling an older lover she’s only 15, Clothilde was forced to sing bloody fables. When the songs weren’t sexually charged jokes, they were melodramatic pop ballads about youth, from Chantal Goya’s unpredictable heartache to Sylvie Vartan’s simple dance-driven desires.
And then there was Françoise Hardy. She wasn’t quite a black sheep of the genre, but she certainly complicated the formula. The Parisian singer auditioned for Vogue Records at 18 and went on to top charts with her very first release, a 1962 self-titled record now known as Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles based on its hit song. From there, the infamously timid Hardy became one of the few French pop stars of the era to cross over, jetting from England to France to record, serving as a muse to designers like Yves Saint Laurent, and inspiring Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger.
That debut showcases Hardy at her simplest, wringing rockabilly-tinged pop magic from modest jazz percussion and steel guitar. Hardy wrote most of her own material, setting her far apart from her peers, and on her debut she penned every song but two. Her lyrics would never hew this close to yé-yé traditions again: See the "whoa-oh-oh" echoing on tracks like "Il Est Tout Pour Moi" and her cover of Bobby Lee Trammell’s "Oh Oh Chéri". The title track "Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles" remains an iconic vision of Hardy's aesthetic: frank music for romantic wallflowers. "They walk in love without fear of tomorrow," she sings in French of the young couples she watches on the street. "Yes but me, I’m single with a tormented soul, yes but me, I’m single because nobody loves me."
The five albums that make up Hardy’s reissues are really compilations of four-track, seven-inch singles. Because of this, some of these records feel disjointed, a side effect from compiling songs that weren’t initially made to sit next to each other. Such is the case for her next three records, Le Premiere Bonheur Du Jour, Mon Amie La Rose, and L’Amitié. Still, each has a different story to tell about Hardy’s musical influences at the time. Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour pulls from American girl groups, echoing the Crystals and the Ronettes on "L’Amour D’Un Garçon", "Nous Tous", and "On Dit De Lui". Elsewhere, the record boasts electric organ arrangements on snappy jazz-inspired tracks like "L’Amour Ne Dure Pas Toujours" and "Comment Tant D’Autres".
On Mon Amie La Rose she explores a Morricone influence that was inchoate on Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles. "Mon Amie La Rose", based on the poem by Cecile Caulker and Jacques Lacome, and "La Nuit Est Sur La Ville" are terrifically spooky and cinematic, the latter depicting Hardy wrestling with cheating with a man on a lonely dark night. Elsewhere, she dips her toes in plucky Western country-rock on "Pas Gentille" and "Tu Ne Dis Rien". But with L’Amitié she zigzags between all these references: She’s the cowgirl guitar-heroine on her cover of "Non Ce N’est Pas Un Rêve", a dreamy wall-of-sound pop charmer on "Le Temps De Souvenirs", and folk singer on "L’Amitié".
No matter her inspiration, Hardy’s music is bound together by her point of view, which is part of what makes her fascinating. Her songwriting is profoundly lonely, frequently insecure. Observers have emphasized Hardy’s anti-social nature as a celebrity, but you can hear it even in her music. Like all introverts, she seems most alone when surrounded by others, her insecurities ricocheting off those around her. On Tous Les Garçon Et Les Filles' "La Fille Avec Toi" she reaches out to an ex only to see him with another girl, bemoaning how beautiful she is. "I dream of losing myself, if only I can lose myself with you," she sings on L’Amitié’s "Tu Peux Bien". On Mon Amie La Rose’s underrated star track "Tu N’As Qu’Un Mot A Dire", she pines for an old lover, singing the verse in hushed tones like someone hugging the sidelines before rushing desperately to the forefront for the chorus, filled with shrill, swooning violins: "You just have to say the word and I’ll return," she cries, breathing urgency into a word as simple as "toi."
It wasn’t until her fifth record La Maison Où J'Ai Grandi that Hardy grew into a more grown-up, baroque sound, one that matched the depth of her sorrow and its complexities. It was her most well-produced, well-written record to date, cohesive in sound and subject matter. Over harpsichord and Hardy’s own Spanish guitar, she echoes the previous four albums' worth of lip-quivering romantic longing, reflecting on what it means to lose love once you find it, or when it doesn’t live up to your fantasies. On "Si C’est Ça", her whispery voice and hushed guitar playing operate on the same frequency. "Maybe this is the moment I prefer, the moment, despite it all, where everything could suddenly switch, where life could change at last," she sings to a lover who is leaving her on "Surtout Ne Vous Retournez Pas". "So I say nothing." The girl whose greatest fantasy was once having a hand to hold now wishes to let it go.
What always made Hardy’s music stand out from her yé-yé peers is how it tackled adolescent desire: Hardy was often consumed with romantic extremes. She reveled in chest-clutching longing, but her adorations came from a place entirely her own. Her obsession with love was devoid of older, male sexualization or control, a privilege not many others of her era enjoyed.
Hardy’s songs feel timeless in how they emphasize a universal dream for pure love. Is this music antique in its sound? Surely. In its sentiment? Hardly. Aside from a few anachronisms ("I’m fine with the movies, for rock, the twist and the cha-cha," she sings on her first album’s track "Je Suis D’Accord") this is '60s pop devoid of vintage signifiers; nobody goes steady, nobody sings of dying an old maid, there is no cutesy, wink-filled posturing. Sometimes, especially in Hardy's choice to cover male singers, her music feels almost devoid of gender. For a genre so tethered to young women of a certain time period, this is a feat.
On Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour’s quick little track "Le Sais-Tu?", Hardy finally sings directly to the object of her affections, but she’s forgotten what she yearned to express. She keeps stopping to sing, "did you know?" as if stuttering: "I so dreaded, did you know, this second, which made me think of the end of the world ... One in which you’re there, holding in your hands without maybe even realizing it: my destiny." There’s a reason her music crossed so many country and language barriers, and it wasn’t just because she looked like a model and hung out with the Rolling Stones. These songs map a sort of adoration that derives its intensity from youth but lingers with us for the rest of our lives. Not many pop stars sing about that these days. To the joy of romantic loners everywhere, Françoise Hardy built her career on it.
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