Françoise Hardy

Françoise Hardy
Hardy in 1966
Born	Françoise Madeleine Hardy (1944-01-17)17 January 1944 Paris, France
Died	11 June 2024(2024-06-11) (aged 80) Paris, France
Occupations	Singer-songwriter actress model astrologer writer
Years active	1962–2021
Spouse	Jacques Dutronc ​ ​ (m. 1981; sep. 1988)​
Children	Thomas Dutronc
Musical career
Genres	French pop yé-yé chanson
Instruments	Vocals guitar
Labels	Disques Vogue Sonopresse Warner Bros. Pathé-Marconi Flarenasch EMI Virgin Parlophone
Website	francoise-hardy.com
Signature

Françoise Madeleine Hardy (French: [fʁɑ̃swaz madlɛn aʁdi]; 17 January 1944 – 11 June 2024) was a French singer-songwriter and actress. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy rose to prominence in the early 1960s as a leading figure of the yé-yé wave and became a cultural icon in France and internationally. In addition to her native French, she also sang in English, Italian, and German. Her musical career spanned more than 50 years, with over 30 studio albums released.

Born and raised in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, Hardy made her musical debut in 1962 on French label Disques Vogue and found immediate success through the song "Tous les garçons et les filles". Drifting away from her early rock and roll influences, 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, she released Comment te dire adieu, La question, and Message personnel. During this period, she worked with songwriters such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger, and Catherine Lara. Between 1977 and 1988, she worked with producer Gabriel Yared on the albums Star, Musique saoûle, Gin Tonic, and À suivre. Her 1988 record Décalages was publicized as her final album, although she returned eight years later with Le danger, which reinvented her sound as harsher alternative rock. Her following albums of the 2000s — Clair-obscur, Tant de belles choses, and (Parenthèses...) — saw a return to her mellow style. In the 2010s, Hardy released her final three albums: La pluie sans parapluie, L'amour fou, and Personne d'autre.

In addition to music, Hardy landed film roles as a supporting actress in Château en Suède, Une balle au cœur, and the American production Grand Prix. She became a muse for fashion designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, and Paco Rabanne, and collaborated with photographer Jean-Marie Périer. Hardy developed a career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject from the 1970s onwards. She was also an author of fiction and non-fiction books from the 2000s. Her autobiography, Le désespoir des singes...et autres bagatelles, was a best-seller in France.

As a public figure, Hardy was known for her shyness, disenchantment with celebrity life, and self-deprecatory attitude, which were attributed to her lifelong struggles with anxiety and insecurity. She married French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc in 1981. Their 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. She died of cancer in Paris in June 2024.

Hardy remains one of the best-selling singers in French history and continues to be regarded as an important and influential figure in both French pop music and fashion. In 2006 she was awarded the Grande médaille de la chanson française, an honorary award given by the Académie française, in recognition of her career in music.

Early life and education

Hardy was raised in a modest apartment on the Rue d'Aumale, in Paris's 9th arrondissement

Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born on 17 January 1944 at the Marie-Louise Clinic in the 9th arrondissement of Paris in German-occupied France during World War II. At the time of her birth, there was an air raid alert in place, with the windows of the clinic "exploding". She related being born in this violent context to the "abnormally anxious temperament" that she developed as an adult. Her younger sister Michèle was born eighteen months after her. Her mother Madeleine Hardy, who came from an ordinary background, raised Françoise and Michèle as a single parent. Her father Étienne Dillard, a married man who came from a much wealthier family, did little to help them financially and was an absent figure in their upbringing, only visiting the children a couple of times a year. Their mother raised her daughters strictly, in a modest apartment on the 9th arrondissement's Rue d'Aumale. Hardy had an unhappy and troubled childhood and mainly engaged in solitary activities like reading, playing with dolls, or listening to the radio.

At the insistence of their father, the girls went to a Catholic school called Institution La Bruyère, under the tutelage of Trinitarian nuns. The socio-economic gap between Hardy and her classmates were a source of her lifelong insecurities. Her mental health was worsened by her regular visits to her maternal grandmother in Aulnay-sous-Bois, who "told [her] repeatedly that [she] was 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. Since her father played piano, Hardy was encouraged to receive piano lessons as a very young child, which she dropped after experiencing stage fright when she was supposed to display her talents on stage at the Salle Gaveau.

A disciplined student, Hardy skipped two years of secondary education and passed her baccalauréat in 1960 at age sixteen. 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 left the institution and joined the Sorbonne to study German. Hardy used the time left from her courses to compose songs. She began to test her repertoire in a small venue, 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 [she] feared".

Music career

1961–1962: Career beginnings

Hardy 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 — headed 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. If a student gave a satisfactory performance, they were given the chance to release a song on the radio or perform it again for television. Hartuch, who was known to be selective, immediately accepted Hardy, recalling in 1966: "The first time [Hardy] 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.

On 14 May 1961, Hardy auditioned for the French label Disques Vogue before the 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 auditioning Françoise in person, Wolfsohn immediately offered her a one-year contract, which she signed on 14 November 1961. Upon learning of Hardy's new record deal, Mireille Hartuch presented her student on the Petit Conservatoire TV show on 6 February 1962, in what has been described as "one of the most popular French TV clips of all time". In the 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. The yé-yé phenomenon was coined by the radio program Salut les copains — created by Daniel Filipacchi — and its magazine of the same name.

1962–1963: Yé-yé sensation

Hardy at the Grand Gala du Disque in the Netherlands, October 1963

Meeting Princess Margriet and sports executive Jaap van Praag.

Receiving the Edison Award in the "Youth" category from writer and TV personality Godfried Bomans.

Recorded in the spring, Vogue released Hardy's 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 to a B-side because the label deemed it too melancholic for young audiences. On 5 June 1962, the singer proudly shared the record sleeve on the Petit Conservatoire show. 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 the 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 on 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 on an amusement ride alongside two girls whose skirts are lifted up by the wind.

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 for the 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 [rpm]". Since most of her full-length records were released without a title, bearing only her name on the cover, they eventually came to be known by the title of their most popular song. 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. By early 1963, 500,000 copies of "Tous les garçons et les filles" had been sold in France, and in total rose to 2.5 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. and Françoise met Michel Bourdais, a young designer recently discovered by Charles Aznavour. The designer created the very first portrait of Françoise Hardy who, artistically seduced, acquired it. Another single titled, "L'amour s'en va", reached No. 5 on the French charts in June 1963. In October, Hardy released her second studio album, Le premier bonheur du jour. 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".

Hardy arriving in Barcelona in 1963, greeted by Hispavox international director Luis Calvo

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. The first non-French-speaking country in which the singer found success was Italy, where the song became "Quelli della mia età" and sold 255,000 copies. It topped the singles chart between April and October, dropping to second place between July and August behind Rita Pavone's "Cuore". At the end of the summer in Milan, she recorded new songs 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.

1964–1968: International stardom

Hardy in 1964

At the peak of the British Invasion phenomenon, Hardy sought to modernize her music, opting to leave the poor quality of French studios and sound engineers to go record her songs at Pye Records' studios in London. 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"). 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 on the charts for fifteen weeks. It was also successful in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, possibly making it her most popular recording among English-speaking audiences.

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 Englis version of the previously released track "Et même..." Hardy's German language album In Deutschland was released, which, in addition to translated versions of her previous songs, included five original compositions. Her most popular track in Germany was "Frag' den Abendwind", which remained on the national singles chart for twenty-four weeks.

Hardy in 1966

On 12 April 1966, Hardy was among the forty-six performers who 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 took Wolfsohn's suggestion to release her records under her own production company Asparagus, although Vogue continued to distribute them. She later regretted this decision, recalling in 1999: "the CEO of Vogue, Léon Cabat, was also in this production company and between them, they owned the majority of the shares. This has given rise to a lot of harassment lawsuits." Her seventh French album Ma jeunesse fout le camp... — the first one produced under Asparagus — was released in November 1967.

On the advice of English producer Noel Rodgers, Hardy recorded her second English 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.

In 1968, Hardy released a french cover of Vera Lynn's "It Hurts to Say Goodbye", titled "Comment te dire adieu", released on the album of the same name. Its french lyrics were written by Serge Gainsbourg and became one of her most successful releases.

1969–1976: Transition to artistic maturity

Hardy in Amsterdam, December 1969

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hardy sought to assert herself more as an artist, although this implied less commercial impact than that which she had achieved with Disques Vogue. In 1970 the singer definitively broke with the label and signed a three-year contract with Sonopresse, a subsidiary of Hachette. She also created a new production company called Hypopotam and founded her own music publishing company Kundalini. Hardy received large advances from Sonopresse, which allowed her to finance her own projects. She described this period as "the happiest time", as she was now able to work independently on her musical endeavours. This transitional period in her career was kicked off by the 1970 releases of several compilation albums, including the French 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, was 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 and Donato Renzetti. Neither this nor the next Italian single — which included translated versions of "Soleil" ("Sole ti amo") and "Le crabe" ("Il granchio") — was met with success. She also recorded in Spanish for the first time for a single that contained translated versions of "Soleil" ("Sol") and "J'ai coupé le téléphone" ("Corté el teléfono"). In the spring of 1971, Hardy released the Patrick Dewaere-penned single "T'es pas poli" after having been impressed with the singer-songwriter's performances at the Café de la Gare in Paris and then reaching out to him. To promote the song, Dewaere and the singer performed it on several television shows. Despite counting on Hardy's fame, the record did not sell as anticipated.

In the early 1970s, Hardy met Tuca, (pseudonym of Valeniza Zagni da Silva), a Brazilian singer and guitarist based in Paris, and they soon became close friends. After attending the Festival Internacional da Canção in Rio de Janeiro and having come into contact with the music of Brazil, Hardy decided to make an album with the Brazilian musician in late 1970. It was the first time in the singer's career that she was able to work with a songwriter on songs before entering the recording studio, in addition to participating in the choice of string arrangements. The resulting album, La question, was released on 16 October 1971, promoted through the singles "Le martien", "Même sous la pluie", and "Rêve". Although it was highly acclaimed by the French press upon release, the album sold poorly in comparison to other works by the singer, as it received little promotion on television and failed to gain traction on radio stations and among audiences at the time. Nevertheless, La question has generated a dedicated cult following since its release and is regarded as Hardy's artistic peak.

Following the poor commercial performance of La question, Hardy decided to move toward a different sound and enlisted British arranger Tony Cox to produce her following album. Known as Et si je m'en vais avant toi, L'éclairage, or in reference to its cover, "The Orange Album", the record was released in November 1972 and promoted through the single "La berlue" (released earlier in June). Immediately after finishing Et si je m'en vais avant toi, Hardy and Cox recorded the English-language release If You Listen, which included cover versions of several little-known American and British songs. When her contract with Sonopresse expired, the label decided not to renew it.

Around 1972, Hardy contacted songwriter and producer Michel Berger with the intention of working with him, after being impressed by his work with Véronique Sanson. Berger agreed to produce and arrange her following album but was unable to write all of its music owing to other obligations. He wrote two of the record's twelve songs, "Message personnel" and "Première rencontre", and took the responsibility of finding the other ten immediately after, which Hardy felt were subpar in comparison. Following a period of artistic independence, the singer again found herself working under the hectic schedule of a demanding producer. She later described Berger as "a man in a hurry, with a thousand things to do, a thousand things to think about, a thousand people to see". The album's recording sessions took place in July 1973, soon after Hardy had given birth to her son Thomas Dutronc. Message personnel was released that year on Warner Bros. Records, with whom Hardy signed a three-year contract, and was greeted with commercial and critical success. Its title track was the big commercial hit in France that reignited the singer's career. She promoted the project with appearances on several French TV shows, including Dimanche Salvador, Sports en fête, Top à, La Une est à vous, Midi trente, Minuit chez vous, Tempo, Averty's Follies, and Domino.

For her following project, Hardy wrote ten songs that revolved around a common underlying story. To put the words into music, she mainly relied on her friend Catherine Lara, also working with Jean-Pierre Castelain and Gérard Kawczynski (with whom she had worked on Message personnel), André Georget, and Michel Sivy. Produced by Hughes de Courson, the concept album Entr'acte was released in November 1974 and promoted through the songs "Ce soir", "Je te cherche", and "Il y a eu des nuits". It was a commercial failure. The singer then decided to stay away from music and devote more time to raising her child, releasing only two singles between 1975 and 1976. The first one was the Jean-Michel Jarre-penned "Que vas-tu faire?" — backed by "Le compte a rebours"— which sold poorly. The second was "Femme parmi les femmes", the main theme of Claude Lelouch's film, Si c'était à refaire, featuring lyrics by Pierre Barouh and music by Francis Lai.

Around 1976, Berger recontacted Hardy with the intention of signing her to his new record label Apache, and she sent him the songs "Ton enfance", "Star", and "L'impasse". However, Berger was keen on releasing an album with compositions structured around a unifying concept, so she gave up the idea of joining the label. She signed a three-year deal with Pathé-Marconi.

1977–1995: Work with Gabriel Yared and hiatus

Hardy in Deauville, Normandy, July 1992

For 1977's Star, her first album released under Pathé-Marconi, Hardy enlisted Gabriel Yared as a producer and arranger. The "patchwork album" includes six tracks written by Hardy, along with songs written by Serge Gainsbourg, William Sheller, Catherine Lara, Luc Plamondon, Roland Vincent, and Michel Jonasz. At first, their relationship was tense, and Star was recorded under a "strained atmosphere", earning her the nickname "ice queen". According to Frédéric Quinonero, "the singer deemed it necessary to immediately dispel any misunderstanding, physical or sentimental, before being integrated into a faithful friendship." Star was a commercial success that put the singer back in the media spotlight and introduced her work to a new generation of young people. Despite their stiff relationship in the recording studio, Hardy and Yared would continue to work together for nearly six years and record five albums. In 1991 the singer recalled her work with the producer:

[Yared] is demanding… in work as in friendship. He had great influence over me. The five albums we made together were not easy… but I consider that it was one of the great chances of my life to find myself again under the guidance of a musician of this dimension.

Her 1978 follow-up Musique saoûle included compositions by Yared, Alain Goldstein, and Michel Jonasz. The album changed Hardy's musical direction to a more danceable sound with commercial success, aided by the popularity of lead single "J'écoute de la musique saoûle", especially its extended remixed version. It was heavily promoted through numerous televised appearances which showed the singer "awkwardly" performing the track among a dancing crowd. Fueled by the popularity of "J'écoute de la musique saoûle" with young people, Yared and collaborator Bernard Ilous worked on her following 1980 album Gin Tonic with an even more commercial approach. Its album cover attempted to present a "furiously modern" image of the singer and was photographed by a collaborator from Façade, a French magazine modelled after Andy Warhol's journal Influence. Gin Tonic was promoted with the singles, "Jazzy rétro Satanas" and "Juke-box", with only the former achieving modest commercial success. Hardy's following album À suivre was released in April 1981 on the label Flarenasch, in breach of contract with Pathé-Marconi. It featured a new array of collaborators — presumably because of her dissatisfaction with her previous songs — with Yared enlisting composers Louis Chedid, Pierre Groscolas, Jean-Claude Vannier, Michel Bernholc, Daniel Perreau, Jean-Pierre Bourtayre, and Étienne Roda-Gil. À suivre was promoted through singles "Tamalou" and "Villégiature", with only the former being successful.

The album Quelqu'un qui s'en va was released in the spring of 1981 and featured a cover photographed by Serge Gainsbourg. Décalages was released on 2 May 1988. Promoted as Hardy's final album, it was a commercial success and certified gold for selling 100,000 copies.

In 1990 the singer wrote the song "Fais-moi une place" for Julien Clerc, which was included in his album of the same name. Hardy resumed her music career in the 1990s, signing a contract with Virgin Records in December 1994. In 1995 Hardy collaborated with English band Blur for the French version of "To the End", recorded at Abbey Road Studios. It was included as a B-side to band's single "Country House".

1996–2021: Final albums and retirement

In 1997 Hardy collaborated with French duo Air on the track "Jeanne", which was a B-side on their maxi-single "Sexy Boy".

In 2005 Hardy received the Female Artist of the Year award for her album Tant de belles choses at the Victoires de la Musique. In 2006 Hardy then received the Grande médaille de la chanson française award, given by the Académie Française in recognition of her music career.

In 2012 Hardy celebrated her 50th anniversary in music with the release of her first novel and an album, both titled L'Amour fou. Diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, the singer declared it her last album but nevertheless returned nearly five years later with the 2018 release of Personne d'autre.

In March 2021, Hardy announced that she could not sing anymore as a result of her cancer treatments.

Acting career

Hardy during the filming of Grand Prix in the Circuit de Charade, August 1966

Although journalists often make note of Hardy's film roles, she never embarked on a serious career as an actress nor wished to do so. Although reluctant, she accepted several acting roles offered to her in the 1960s on the advice of Jean-Marie Périer. The singer recalled: "I couldn't see how I could turn down offers by well-known film directors. However, I far preferred music to cinema. Music and chanson allow you to go deep into yourself and how you feel, while cinema is about playing a part, playing a character who might be miles away from who you are." In 1963 Hardy made her film debut playing the role of Ophelia in Roger Vadim's Château en Suède. Before casting her, Vadim tested Hardy's acting abilities by directing her in a reading of Cécile de Roggendorf's love letters to Giacomo Casanova for radio Europe n° 1. She did not get along well with the director during the making of Château en Suède, who mocked her for her "infinite apathy", and the film shoot marked the "beginning of her dread for filming sessions and the movie business in general". In promotion of the film, Hardy attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she wore a black coat by Pierre Cardin.

After a cameo in What's New Pussycat?, Hardy landed a role in Jean-Daniel Pollet's 1966 film Une balle au cœur, which was shot on location in a remote Greek island. The experience was also unsatisfactory, with her recalling: "I felt like I was at the other end of the world and my morale sank below zero when, after a day or two, I realized that the director was hopelessly bad and his film was a disaster." Building on her music career success in Italy, Hardy also made appearances as a performer in musicarelli films, including I ragazzi dell'Hully Gully (1964), Questo pazzo, pazzo mondo della canzone (1965), Altissima pressione (1965), and Europa canta (1965). She also appeared in the 1968 television special Monte Carlo: C'est La Rose, hosted by Grace Kelly.

In the mid-1960s, American director John Frankenheimer spotted Hardy as she was leaving a London club and thought she would be perfect as one of the characters in Grand Prix, a film he was developing about Formula One auto racing. Despite remaining uninterested in an acting career, Hardy agreed because the film's big-budget production offered her a large remuneration. The singer made a notable cameo in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Masculin féminin, wearing a head-to-toe look by André Courrèges, including his famous white boots. In 1969 she starred in the television film L'homme qui venait du Cher alongside Eddy Mitchell. In the 1970s, she made brief appearances in Jean-Claude Lord's The Doves (Les Colombes) (1972) and Claude Lelouch's If I Had to Do It All Over Again (Si c'était à refaire) (1976).

Astrological career

In addition to being a musician Hardy developed a career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject. She aligned herself with the so-called "conditionalist" school of thought, outlined by Jean-Pierre Nicola in his 1964 book, La condition solaire, which proposed a non-divinatory character for the discipline and said that it should be used while taking into account other factors such as hereditary, educational, and socio-cultural determinants. Hardy wrote about her distrust of most astrologers and of "predictive astrology", explaining:

... I believe this human science is restricted to offering information on one of the many factors that conditions our lives, the one connected with the rhythms of our solar system. It simply allows us to get our bearings and identify as best we can the various phases of our development, which are dependent on many more factors than just planetary cycles and configurations, and does not necessarily translate into terms of particular events and outcomes.

Hardy first became interested in the subject after consulting astrologer André Barbault in the mid-1960s. She took public courses, learned to draw up a birth chart and read many specialized books before meeting Catherine Aubier, who recommended her teacher to Hardy. Hardy was taught traditional astrology for two years by Madame Godefroy in Paris. She became more dedicated to astrology after meeting Nicola in 1974, who asked her to be part of a new magazine he was developing. The singer described Nicola as "the best astrologer in the world" and wrote: "[he] initiated me into an intelligent understanding of astrology and trained me to use it, by his side, to the best of my ability." Besides astrology, Hardy was initiated into the reading of the Tarot of Marseilles by Alejandro Jodorowsky. As a complement to her astrological knowledge, she also took courses with graphologist Germaine Tripier, the dean of the French Society of Graphology.

Between recording sessions for her album Gin Tonic in 1979, Hardy collaborated on a book series on the zodiac signs by Tchou Editions, and worked on the book dedicated to Virgo with fellow astrologer Béatrice Guénin. She also collaborated with the magazine Quinze Ans. In late 1980, Hardy was asked by Pierre Lescure of the RMC radio station to provide the daily horoscope and a weekly show. In 1982 Hardy began a new weekly broadcast, titled Entre les lignes, entre les signes, in which she interviewed a film or music figure using their birth chart, and graphologist Anne-Marie Simmond, whose courses Hardy had taken, drew up a psychological portrait using their handwriting. A compilation of the interviews and profiles was published by RMC in 1986.

In 1990, Hardy continued her astrological work by writing articles in Swiss newspaper Le Matin and by hosting a weekly section in Thierry Ardisson's program Télé Zèbre on Antenne 2. On 7 May 2003, Hardy published Les rythmes du zodiaque, which had taken over two years to write and which she intended to be "a book that would allow me to make my little contribution to modern astrology".

Writing career

In addition to writing about astrology, Hardy developed as an author of both fiction and non-fiction. Her autobiography Le désespoir des singes... et autres bagatelles was published on 9 October 2008 and became a bestseller in France, with 250,000 copies sold. The book was translated and published in Spanish by the San Sebastián-based independent publisher Expediciones Polares in 2017. In 2018 the English-language edition of the book was released by Feral House, titled The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles, translated by Jon E. Graham.

Hardy presenting her first novel L'amour fou in Paris, November 2012

In 2012 Hardy published her first novel, L'amour fou, on Éditions Albin Michel. It was released in conjunction with a music album of the same name. Hardy had begun working on the story, which dealt with an obsessive romantic relationship, thirty years before its publication. She had shelved the manuscript and had no intention of releasing it, but was urged to do so by her editor and agreed after being encouraged by her friend, Jean-Marie Périer. Hardy felt that it was appropriate to publish the book to mark the fiftieth year of her musical career, as it was "the story that has been the matrix of almost all of my lyrics from the start". In 2013 the Italian-language edition of the novel was released by Florence's Edizioni Clichy.

Following poor sales of the albums La pluie sans parapluie and L'Amour fou, Hardy decided to distance herself from music and dedicate herself to writing. This resulted in the essay Avis non autorisés, released in 2015 on Éditions des Équateurs, in which she described the difficulties of reaching old age. In this book she also shared views on current affairs which were deemed "politically incorrect". Avis non autorisés was a commercial success. A year later, she published Un cadeau du ciel in which she reflected on her hospitalization in March 2015 for cancer, during which she nearly died. In the early 2020s, after being unable to continue singing, and claiming that she had "nothing else to do", Hardy dedicated herself assembling a song book, Chansons sur toi et nous, a compilation of all of her lyrics with commentaries. Chansons sur toi et nous was published in 2021 on Éditions des Équateurs.

Artistry

Musical style

The inspiration for my lyrics came, in part, from my anxieties. In many songs, I have mentioned my fear of not being up to the task and of being left for a woman a priori a thousand times more interesting and more attractive than me. A fear that is not necessarily unfounded...

— Hardy, L'Express, 2013.

Although Hardy's music covered a wide range of genres, she maintained a signature sound from the beginning of her career which was defined by breathy alto vocals and a predilection for melancholic songs. Rock & Folk's Basile Farkas described her as the "queen of melancholy", and Hardy herself stated in 2012: "In music, I like above all the slow, sad melodies that stir the knife in the wound. Not in a way that plunges, but in a way that uplifts. Because it feels good that the pains of feelings turn into something beautiful: a beautiful text, a beautiful melody. I still aspire to find the heartbreaking melody that will bring tears to my eyes. A melody whose quality gives it a sacred dimension." Cosette Schulz of Exclaim! described her as a "master of crafting simple but stellar tracks". Writers have likened Hardy's music to that of English singer Marianne Faithfull. Comparing both singers, The Guardian's Keith Altham wrote in 2014: "They both sing sad songs with a simple folksy style. They both have the same shy, wistful, almost waif-like appeal about them. They both have a dramatic, 'all-alone' quality about their voices which commands sympathy and attention." The recurring themes of her lyrics are sadness, personal pain, heartache, one-sided love, sleeplessness, boredom, loneliness, and confinement. Her deadpan delivery, characterized by its "cool, aloof air", has also been compared to that of German singer Nico.

Hardy in 1965

Hardy was known for being meticulous about her music, as seen in as her decision to leave low-quality French studios and record in London during the mid-1960s, an attitude which set her apart from her French contemporaries. As she matured, Hardy honed her own despairing songwriting, but she also chose from the works of leading professionals. Producer Erick Benzi recalled: "From when she was 18, she knew she was different. She was capable of going in front of big artists like Charles Aznavour and saying, 'Your song is crap, I don't want to sing it.' She never made compromises." Tony Cox recalled his experience working with Hardy: "Françoise was good in that she liked things to be slightly more adventurous than the norm. There was a bit of the Left Bank about her – she's not your average pop singer, that's for sure." She was also known for playing down her skills as a singer and musician. She told Rock & Folk in 2018: "I'm not a musician, that's it. By stopping to compose, I went towards ease, but also towards realism. I understood that even if I did learn things, I would never be able to do as well as real melodists. That's why I thought it was best to bring in musicians whose work touched me."

Influences

Her earliest musical tastes were French chanson singers, including Cora Vaucaire, Georges Guétary, Charles Trenet, and Jacques Brel, since in the 1950s this was the only music played on the radio. She said that Trenet touched her more than the others because his music was "sad and light". Hardy was also a big fan of singer and songwriter Barbara, who had inspired her to write her own compositions. In the early 1960s, she was introduced to English-language rock and roll and Brill Building pop through Radio Luxembourg and took inspiration from artists such as Brenda Lee, the Everly Brothers, the Shadows, Cliff Richard, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, and especially Elvis Presley and Paul Anka. Hardy said she was "completely spellbound" by these young foreign artists and began to sing and play the guitar to try to imitate them. She recalled in 2008: "I immediately identified with them, because they expressed teenage loneliness and awkwardness, over melodies that were much more inspiring than their lyrics".

Hardy's music during the second half of the decade incorporated influences from the British Invasion pop phenomenon and "a strong comeback of the traditional values of French chanson, neither yé-yé nor 'Left Bank', but rather romantic". Her 1964 album Mon amie la rose incorporated influences of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound technique, as well as Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Brazilian guitarist and arranger Tuca, introduced Hardy to bossa nova, which culminated to the 1971 album La Question.

Hardy was an admirer of English folk singer-songwriter Nick Drake. She recalled: "For me, he didn't belong to a particularly British tradition… It is the soul which comes out of his songs that touched me deeply – romantic, poetic… but also the refined melodies. As well as the very individual timbre of his voice, which adds to the melancholy of the whole thing." Their personalities, voices, and tastes in chords and harmony were perceived to be similar.

In 1972, Véronique Sanson's debut album made an impression on Hardy, who began to feel that her own music was outdated. She described her impression of Sanson in her autobiography: "It was as if the English and American influences that yé-yé had been happy to simply copy… had been thoroughly digested and allowed for the emergence of something much more musically mature, as well as more personal." Hardy's 1996 output Le danger incorporated influences from English band Portishead and the grunge, Britpop, and roots rock genres.

Development

1962–1967

Although she is regarded as one of the greatest exponents of the yé-yé pop phenomenon of the early to mid-1960s, she was apart from her peers in writing much of her own material, which allowed her songs to be "devoid of older, male sexualization or control, a privilege not many others of her era enjoyed." She also distanced herself from the other yé-yé singers by "eschewing the easy road of sunny, good girl pop". According to Jean-Marie Périer: "She was the opposite of all the French new artists trying to look and sound American. And her melodies were sad, she didn't try to make them dance the twist." Aside from original compositions, much of her 1960s repertoire consisted of versions of foreign artists that spanned a wide range of styles, including American girl-groups, early rockabilly, pre-Beatles British rock and roll, country music, folk, folk-rock and, to a lesser extent, doo-wop and soul.

Her rockabilly-tinged, full-length debut album Tous les garçons et les filles was the closest she came to the yé-yé genre. The album was noted for its simple, minimalist accompaniment of acoustic and electric guitar, bass, and jazz-influenced percussion. Robert Ham of Paste felt that the album "reveals a musician that had yet to fully absorb her influences and make them her own." Russell Warfield of Drowned in Sound described it as "the product of a patriarchal music industry", as he felt Hardy had not been trusted to shape her own material. Her next album, Le premier bonheur du jour, incorporated more complex instrumentation and lyricism, with electric organs and "weeping" string arrangements and included compositions inspired by jazz music, as well as American girl groups such as the Crystals and the Ronettes.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, her music became lusher and richer after she went to London to record with arranger Charles Blackwell, who allowed her to "reach new levels of sophistication." Released in 1964, Mon amie la rose showed a growing complexity in her music, with stronger vocals and increased experimentation in song structure, and was said to be her most varied album yet. Her 1965 and 1966 output showed her style maturing, with productions that "moved from the tinny sound of yeh-yeh pop into a fuller brand of rock arrangements." The overall sound of her follow-up L'amitié is considerably more expansive. According to Pitchfork's Hazel Cills: "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." Warfield considered that it was the album in which she had "really settled into her sound, giving us a glimpse of the performer we can still recognise as a 70-year-old". With Ma jeunesse fout le camp, her last 1960s album recorded in London, she "moved toward a more adult, sedate form of orchestrated pop balladry" which has been described as "her farewell to the yé-yé years".

1968–1974

With Hardy's return to French recording studios, 1968's Comment te dire adieu was more MOR-oriented than her previous releases. Richie Unterberger considered its music to be "perhaps even sadder and more sentimental" than usual. As the yé-yé era faded away following the May 68 protests in France, Hardy "reinvented herself as an elusive folk-rock/jazz chanteuse" with her early 1970s releases. The singer developed a more mature and less-pop oriented style in an effort to reflect her inner self to a greater extent. Described as "the first truly personal Françoise Hardy record", the 1971 album La question was regarded as an important turning point in her career, moving toward a less commercial sound with no apparent hooks. It was one of her "most sparsely produced efforts," with subdued and acoustic-flavored arrangements that featured guitar, touches of bass, and subtle orchestration. Hardy's vocals have been described as "sultry" and "breathy", at times "[substituting] melodic humming in the place of singing, wordlessly articulating the emotional essence of the song." La question also marked the first time that Hardy had a part in choosing the string arrangements for her work.

Following La question, Hardy progressed to a more folk and rock-influenced sound. This led producer Joe Boyd to propose that Nick Drake write an album of songs for Hardy, which would be produced by Tony Cox. The two singers met several times, including a visit by Drake to Hardy's recording sessions in London, but the project was never carried out. Cox was keen to work with Hardy and in late 1971 recorded If You Listen, which featured a "crack team" of British folk-rock musicians. Influenced by Drake, the album featured "cinematic" arrangements that emphasized the acoustic guitar and light strings. The same year, Hardy released Et si je m'en vais avant toi, which incorporated influences from American blues, folk, and rock music and featured, unusually, a slightly humorous tone and catchier rhythms.

Hardy enlisted Michel Berger, who produced Véronique Sanson's debut album, to oversee the production of her 1973 album Message personnel. The album featured arrangements by Michel Bernholc, who directed "a basic rock band backed by a lush set of strings, [underlining] Hardy's wispy yet compelling vocals." The album was characterized by its sad, introspective mood and "classy, adult tone". The 1974 release Entr'acte was Hardy's first attempt at a concept album, with lyrics that narrated "the successive phases of a one-night stand between a stranger and a young woman, who, abandoned by the man she loves, is looking to give him a taste of his own medicine." It featured orchestral arrangements by Del Newman, who had recently worked on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman.

1975–2018

1977's Star, a jazz-oriented pop record, was Hardy's first album arranged by Gabriel Yared, who produced her output for the next ten years. In 1978, as disco dominated the music industry, Yared sought to adapt her sound to the era with the release of Musique saoûle, which incorporated rhythms influenced by funk music. The singer said later that she had felt uncomfortable and embarrassed when singing over dance rhythms. The 1988 album Décalages, noted for its layered, atmospheric sound, incorporated the use of a Synclavier synthesizer, despite the singer's wishes to avoid fashionable digital sounds in favor of an acoustic style.

Inspired by the alternative rock scene, in 1996 Hardy veered into an assertive, guitar-oriented modern rock style with Le danger, her first album in seven years. Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe described its music as "adult-contemporary space rock". The album's harsh sound and lyrics reflect the "very dark" period of her life that the singer was in at the time. The commercial failure of Le danger, among other reasons, caused Hardy to return to her characteristic soft and light style for her following album Clair-obscur, released in 2000 and her last five albums were characterized by their elegant and melancholic sound. 2006's (Parenthèses...) was a collection of twelve duets with a production that kept tricks and slick mixing to a minimum, drawing comparisons to previous uncluttered releases such as La question. Compared to previous albums, 2010's La pluie sans parapluie featured a "sunnier" sound, with some of its songs driven by a typical rhythm track of drums and bass, rather than by piano or strings. Her 2012 album L'amour fou featured half-sung, half-spoken vocals and was characterized by its "resigned, philosophical" mood. Hardy was backed by "classy" pianos, minor chords, and brushed drums. The lyrics of her last album, Personne d'autre, released in 2018, dealt with her advancing years and her own mortality, having survived a major health crisis since the release of her previous record. Her vocals on the album were affected by her illness. The dark lyrical subject matter of Personne d'autre contrasted with the singer's characteristic delicate and intimate sound.

Live performances

Hardy performing in 1968

On 11 May 1962, Hardy made her debut as a live performer alongside other young singers at the Disco Revue gala in Nancy. She performed on Christmas Eve in Brussels and undertook a successful tour in Southern France from late 1962 to early 1963. In February 1963, she appeared on the TV show Cinq colonnes à la une alongside Sylvie Vartan and Sheila. They were later considered to be the three biggest idols of the yé-yé era, each one embodying a different modern girl archetype. She made her first appearance at the 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.

Between tour dates she represented Monaco at the Eurovision Song Contest in London, singing "L'amour s'en va", and finished fifth with 25 points in a tie with France's Alain Barrière. Between 7 November and 18 December 1963, Hardy appeared again as Anthony's opening act at the Olympia in Paris and was well received by the press, who had previously criticized her stiff live performances. On 11 October, Hardy performed in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the fourth Great Gala of the Sedería Española. In November, 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 on TV shows.

On 21 February 1964, Hardy promoted "Catch a Falling Star" on the British TV show Ready Steady Go! and on the same show performed "All Around the World". She also played on Ollie and Fred's Five O'Clock Club, Thank Your Lucky Stars, and Top of the Pops. In the United States, Hardy made her first appearance on 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".

Hardy became famous overnight in Germany after her 28 April 1965 television appearance in Portrait in Musik, a series of staged musical performances directed by Truck Branss. 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".

Hardy gave her last three live performances in Kinshasa, Congo, in June 1967. She suffered from stage fright, which led to her quitting live performances altogether in 1968.

Public image and impact

Personality

As a public figure, Hardy was renowned for her shyness and reservedness, and observers have emphasized her "anti-social nature as a celebrity". She was open in her autobiography and in interviews about her struggles with anxiety, self-doubt, loneliness and inferiority complex. Uncut's Tom Pinnock noted that "it was her refusal to play the showbusiness game that made her something of an icon." The singer's sudden celebrity status was a source of great discomfort for her, as she claimed in 2011: "I didn't enjoy at all everything, the trappings, when all of a sudden you become very famous. (...) [Being taken up by fashion houses] was work, things I had to do, a chore—I didn't enjoy it at all... It is quite impossible to stand—to be admired too much—it is not a normal situation. I don't like that at all. I am not comfortable with my professional life really, so the word 'icon'—it's as though you were talking about someone else, it's not me really." She was also disenchanted with the jet-set and high society lifestyle.

Fashion trend-setter

File:Francoise Hardy in Paco Rabanne minidress.jpg

Hardy in 1968 wearing a minidress made of gold designed by Paco Rabanne. During the decade, the singer was a muse to both top and emerging fashion houses. The metal plated dress is considered one of the most iconic and influential looks in both Hardy's and Rabanne's careers.

As Hardy's almost exclusive photographer and agent during the decade, Jean-Marie Périer became a Pygmalion-like figure for her, and transformed the singer's public image from "a shy, gauche-looking schoolgirl" into a "modern young trend-setter." She wrote: "…[Périer] tried to open my mind and help me in all domains with his characteristic generosity… under his tutelage I realized the importance of aesthetics, which became one of my major criteria. He taught me how to carry myself and to dress, and gave me advice on social skills". He persuaded the singer to begin modelling and she soon became "a star of the international fashion world as well as the French music scene." She was photographed by Gered Mankowitz, William Klein and Richard Avedon for Vogue and other publications. Her regular appearance on magazine covers gave her a reputation of being the quintessential French cover girl of the 1960s. In 1968, Hardy told a reporter that: "If it weren't for the way I dress, no one would notice me". Likewise, she told Vanity Fair in 2018: "My songs had little interest compared to the Anglo-Saxon production. So I took it to heart to dress well every time I went to London or New York. I was above all a fashion ambassador."

As an "it girl" and fashion leader, Hardy was considered the epitome of "the 'Modern Woman'" and of 1960s French chic and cool, known for her avant-garde and futuristic fashion choices. Brett Marie of PopMatters noted that "her sense of style and '60s-era model figure made her as much an icon of fashion as a music-business star." She recalled in 2008 that at the start of the 1960s, her slender build which had made her self-conscious suddenly became fashionable. She began to be regarded as an "égérie" 'muse' by top French fashion designers of the time, including André Courrèges, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. Hardy championed the first incarnation of Saint-Laurent's rupturist 1966 design Le Smoking, and the designer recalled that when he took her to the Paris Opera dressed in one of his tuxedos, "People screamed and hollered. It was an outrage".

Hardy was an early fan of Paco Rabanne, making the Spanish designer popular by wearing his creations for photoshoots and television performances. Photographs from 1968 show her wearing a golden metal minidress by Rabanne, "the most expensive dress in the world" at the time.

Hardy modelled creations of the nascent prêt-à-porter industry, a new wave of French female designers known as the "yé-yé school" or "the stylistes", who rebelled against the "strictures of haute couture". She helped to launch the career of Sonia Rykiel by wearing her influential "poor boy sweater" on the cover of Elle, and was photographed by David Bailey wearing Emmanuelle Khanh's color-blocking coat for Vogue. Fashion Institute of Technology's Colleen Hill considered Hardy's style to be the most enduring of all the yé-yé girls, noting that "her nonchalance is an important part of her appeal. Hardy's fashion choices, such as her white Courrèges pantsuits and Yves Saint Laurent's first Le Smoking, were distinctly '60s and streamlined, yet they also have an edge."

Hardy was also known for a pared-down style with discreet hairdos and makeup, often wearing a simple sweater and pants combination. Her signature look was defined by her bangs and use of white boots by Courrèges, and she was one of the first people to wear miniskirts. She also experimented with androgynous silhouettes. She was described as the "anti-Bardot", imposing a beauty ideal that "rendered the exaggerated femininity of the sex-kitten of the time old-fashioned". By the 1970s she had abandoned the image of a "fashionable young girl about town" that Périer had created for her.

1960s universal myth

Her public image and style during the 1960s made an impact on international pop culture, something that overshadowed her skills as a singer outside of France. In 1967, teen magazine Special Pop wrote: "[Hardy] manages to attract both kids and their parents, men and women alike. More than a singer, she's becoming a universal myth with whom thousands of young girls dream of identifying."

In the second half of the decade, Hardy became known as an inspiring cultural personality and was made a muse by numerous creative people. She was the subject of portraits by artists Michel Bourdais, Bernard Buffet, Gabriel Pasqualini and Jean-Paul Goude. In 1965, Jacques Prévert wrote a poem dedicated to the singer titled Une plante verte, which was read as part of Hardy's performance at the Olympia. She was also the subject of a poem by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and an open letter by Paul Guth. Belgian illustrator Guy Peellaert used Hardy as a model for the title character of his 1968 pop art and psychedelic-inspired comic Pravda la Survireuse, made in collaboration with French screenwriter Pascal Thomas.

The singer was admired by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, who invited her to spend a week with him in Cadaqués in 1968. Hardy was also admired in the Swinging London scene and she acknowledged having been a "source of fascination for the English pop musicians". Malcolm McLaren described her as the "utmost of the pinup girl, pinned to the walls of every trendy pop apprentice's bedroom down in Chelsea. Many bands in their prime, like the Beatles or the Stones, dreamt of dating her." Her image fascinated the young David Bowie, Mick Jagger (who described her as his "ideal woman"), Brian Jones, Morrissey, and Richard Thompson.

Bob Dylan was infatuated by Hardy and included a beat poem dedicated to her on the back cover of his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan. It began: "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/swirlin' lifelike colors of leather spin..." In 2018, Hardy told Uncut that she had drafts of the poem that Dylan had left in a café. She said, "... I was very moved. This was a young man, a very romantic artist, who had a fixation on somebody only from a picture. You know how very young people are... I realised it had been very important for him." Hardy and Dylan met in May 1966, behind the scenes of his performance at Olympia. Noticing that Hardy was in the audience, Dylan had refused to go back on stage to perform the second half unless she went to his dressing room. She and other singers later joined Dylan at his suite in the Four Seasons Hotel George V, where he gave her early pressings of "Just Like a Woman" and "I Want You".

Legacy and influence

Few splendors remain so long in the memory. If the music of the yé-yé girls was always a jovial gleam that dazzled, that of Françoise Hardy survives as perhaps the most intense due to her sentimental complexity, a whole swirl of past and future nostalgia sung with overwhelming intimacy. Today it seems like one more trifle, but then, back in the sixties of the last century, hearing a song of heartbreak in the mouth of this woman with a sweet and penetrating voice marked a milestone.

— Fernando Navarro, El País, 2020.

Hardy was celebrated as a "French national treasure" and one of the greatest figures in French music. She was one of the best-selling music artists in French history, with over 7.6 million records sold by November 2017. American critic Richie Unterberger described her as "indisputably the finest pop-rock artist to emerge from that country in the 1960s" and said he would like to see Hardy inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2011, Hardy was included in Le Petit Larousse Illustré.

Long after her heyday in the 1960s, Hardy continued to be regarded as an important and influential figure in fashion history. During his time at Balenciaga, designer Nicolas Ghesquière described her in Vogue as "the very essence of French style". The photographs of the singer wearing a Paco Rabanne metal-plated dress inspired Lizzy Gardiner's design of the costumes of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and her own Oscars dress. Hardy was a muse to Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, who named her label Comme des Garçons after a lyric in the song "Tous les garçons et les filles".

Over her career, Hardy amassed a large fanbase among gay men and was regarded as a gay icon by the community. She said on several occasions that her most devoted friends and fans were gay.

Hardy's musical influence is found in the work of Francophone acts such as Coralie Clément, La Femme, Juliette Armanet, Melody's Echo Chamber, Keren Ann and Carla Bruni, who imitated Hardy's style for her musical debut. Writers have pointed to her influence on the music of English avant-pop group Stereolab, including similarities in Hardy's vocals and those of lead singer Lætitia Sadier. Outside the French-speaking world, she has been mentioned as an inspiration to female singer-songwriters like Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, Angel Olsen, Candie Payne, Erin Rae, Heather Trost, Violetta Zironi, Zooey Deschanel and Cat Power. Hardy has also influenced alternative music acts such as Broadcast, Goldfrapp, Jeremy Jay, The Chap and Xeno & Oaklander. In an article for Into Creative, Filmmaker Grant McPhee described her as 'A poster-girl for shy people and a fantasy figure for believing they too can be cool' In 2021, Rivers Cuomo of American rock band Weezer cited Hardy as one of his "sonic ideals", and side he was particularly influenced by her album Message personnel. Greg Gonzalez of American dream pop band Cigarettes After Sex called Hardy one of his biggest musical influences, stating in 2016: "La question is just so perfect, I wanted that kind of beauty."

The 1971 cult album La question appeared in The Guardian's "1000 albums to hear before you die". In 2017, Pitchfork ranked Tous les garçons et les filles ninetieth on its list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s", with Marc Hogan describing it as "an enduring middle ground between rockabilly shimmy and Gallic introspection, delivered by the most glamorous wallflower in France." In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Hardy at number 162 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Personal assesment on career

Despite the popularity her first albums Tous les garçons et les filles and Le premier bonheur du jour, Hardy was critical of these releases. She in seperate interviews in 2018 that she "felt very frustrated because I wanted to have beautiful electric guitars like those of the Shadows in the sixties or those of Cigarettes After Sex… Instead, I had very bad French musicians and a terribly bad musical production." After she went to London in 1963 to record new albums, she felt more autonomy "to make another kind of music, not this mechanical music I had been trapped in."

Despite the poor commercial performances of her early 1970s releases, La question, Et si je m'en vais avant toi, and If You Listen, Hardy felt artistically vindicated with these records. She felt especially proud of La question, further stating in 2008: "while it did not enjoy great success with the public at large, at least I can claim that it did touch another audience… Often an ambitious record can be more or less ignored when it is released but ends up having a long life." In 1996 interview with The Independent, Hardy believed that most people didn't know her artistry and that she always had to talk about the 1960s and the Beatles.

Personal life

Family

Hardy and fellow musician Jacques Dutronc began their famous relationship in 1967 and married in 1981.

In 1962 Hardy formed a romantic and professional relationship with Salut Les Copains photographer Jean-Marie Périer. They did not live together and were constantly apart because of their work obligations, which took a toll on the relationship. They broke up in 1966 but remained close friends and collaborators. Hardy began a much publicized relationship with singer Jacques Dutronc in 1967. After the birth of their only child, a son Thomas, on 16 June 1973, Hardy and Dutronc moved into in a three-story house near Parc Montsouris in the autumn of 1974. The family moved every summer to a house owned by Dutronc in Lumio on the island of Corsica. As an adult, Hardy's son Thomas Dutronc also developed a career as a musician.

Hardy and Dutronc were married on 30 March 1981 in a private ceremony. According to Hardy, they formalized their relationship for "fiscal reasons". She said in 1989 that she had always considered marriage "an uninteresting formality". "I had a little health problem, and since I am of a hyperanxious, hypochondriac temperament… I had gone to see a lawyer to find out what would happen if something happened to me. And [I was told that] everyone [would have] an interest in Jacques and I being married." Their relationship become troubled, compounded by infidelities on both parts and by Dutronc's alcoholism, and the couple separated in 1988. They never divorced and their relationship evolved into that of a "special friendship". In 2016, Hardy told Le Parisien that although Dutronc had rebuilt his life with a new partner, it is he who did not want to divorce. She said: "One day, a long time ago, regarding another relationship, I told him he had to make a commitment. And that's when he said to me, 'I'll never get a divorce.' What do you want me to say?"

Hardy discussed her family history, including the fate of her father and younger sister. In the early 1980s, she learned that her distant father had led a double life as a closeted gay man when one of his young lovers bragged about his financial support to one of Dutronc's friends. She wrote in 2008: "The revelation that someone is a homosexual is not shocking in itself, even if it is your own father, but the fact that at the age of almost eighty he was picking up young guys turned my stomach, despite the loneliness and suffering such degraded behavior implied." Her father died in hospital on 6 February 1981 after being assaulted, presumably by a young male prostitute, which was not reported in the press at the time. Raised without the affection of their parents, Hardy's sister grew up to be suicidal, and developed paranoid schizophrenic tendencies and in May 2004 she was found dead at her home in L'Île-Rousse, possibly by suicide.

Politics

As a public figure, Hardy was known for her frankness regarding her political views, which have been described as right-wing. She was raised in a Gaullist family and she told Télérama in 2011: "I kept that sensitivity. I don't like everything that is said or done on the right, and I don't denigrate everything that is done or said on the left. To be honest, basically I'm pretty centrist." In her 2008 autobiography, she wrote: "I only identify with ecology, which I absolutely believe is neither right nor left, but the fact I am not a puppet of the established authority will probably be enough to pigeonhole me."

While promoting her album Décalages, Hardy was interviewed by the magazine Rockland. The conversation strayed into politics, the 1988 French presidential election having taken place the day before, and believing that an off-the-record discussion would not be included in the final article, Hardy expressed contempt for people on the left. She was outraged when the political part of the interview was published, and defended herself in a televised interview on 13 May with Thierry Ardisson, in which she recounted an altercation with singer Renaud, claiming that he had insulted her for her support of Minister of Culture François Léotard. In the Rockland interview, she also caused controversy with comments about racism in France, saying "We do not talk about anti-French racism, that there are places where you are more likely to enter if you are not French", as well as about antisemitism, suggesting that "those who see it everywhere could actually be sowing its seeds." The singer later distanced herself from these remarks, writing in her autobiography: "Since then, I have become more aware of the ethnic, social, and cultural differences that separate individuals. However, I still believe that the affinities of the heart and soul weigh more heavily on the scales and also have the marvellous power of transforming opposites into complementarities."

Hardy was an opponent of the solidarity tax on wealth (French: impôt de solidarité sur la fortune; ISF). She defended the tax shield put in place by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010 and caused controversy by denouncing François Hollande's tax program during the 2012 French presidential election, telling Paris Match: "I believe that most people do not realize the tragedy that the ISF causes to people in my category. I am forced, almost 70 years old and ill, to sell my apartment and move out." This prompted her son Thomas Dutronc to write on Twitter: "But no mom, don't worry I'll invite you over to my place just in case..." Hardy later complained: "First, contrary to what has been written, I did not speak of the 'tragedy' of people who pay the ISF. The tragedy is the people who are losing their jobs because of offshoring and the [European debt] crisis, and about whom we hear every day in the newspapers. Then I never said I was going to be homeless. It's absurd. And even less that I was going to go into exile!"

Hardy expressed her support for legalising abortion, while distancing herself from feminism. She wrote in 2008: "It is better to forgo having a child if you are not able to supply the minimum resources and time required for it to develop into a healthy, balanced adult. ... In contemporary French society, we hear a lot more talk about rights than we do their inseparable duties. This can be seen in how the feminist discourse has advanced the right of women to do as they wish with their own bodies, while passing over in silence, exactly like the puritan position, the fate of the children, although their fate should take precedence over everything else." In 2015, the singer caused controversy with her criticism of feminist activists in her essay "Avis non autorisés ...", in which she wrote: "I find them surly, ugly, that is to say not feminine for two cents. I have never been able to identify in anything with feminists. There are, however, some that I could have idealized..."

During the 2017–2018 protests in France, Hardy expressed her support for President Emmanuel Macron. She said "We must let him reform France. Part of the French people don't want to see the reality and are stuck in the Marxist ideology. What I like about President Macron is that he is an idealist but not an ideologue and is firmly grounded in reality." During the 2023 French pension reform strikes, she told Le Journal du Dimanche that she was "ashamed of what was happening" in France, fearing that "repeated strikes" would deter tourists, and defended the pension reform bill.

Health and death

Between late 2004 and early 2005 Hardy was diagnosed with MALT lymphoma, which inaugurated a "hellish period" that disrupted her life. She underwent chemotherapy treatment that was initially successful. In March 2015, her condition worsened and she had to be admitted to hospital, where she was put into an artificial coma and nearly died. While in hospital, she broke her hip and elbow. She told Le Figaro: "I am very isolated, very handicapped by illness. I was diagnosed with lymphoma over ten years ago. But it is especially in the last three years that my symptoms have worsened. I also have a lot of difficulty walking. [...] There are times when I absolutely cannot see anyone and I cannot go out. But I remain positive, I live from day to day, I have no choice, I avoid thinking about it, it does not obsess me."

Hardy underwent further chemotherapy and immunotherapy sessions. Her health worsened, and in 2021 she made news as an advocate for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in France. She told Paris Match that she regretted that, if her condition became unbearable, in France she would not have the consolation of being able to resort to euthanasia. ("Quand mon état deviendra encore plus insupportable, je n’aurai, hélas, pas le soulagement de savoir que je peux me faire euthanasier. La France est inhumaine sur ce plan-là.").

She told RTL's Flavie Flament: "It's absolutely appalling, but for the moment I'm reassured. I manage to cook for myself. As long as I can do that, okay! But if it does become even worse, if I am weakened to the point of not being able to do anything, I would seriously think about euthanasia. I cannot stay like this waiting for death to come, because I cannot live any more. I can't do the things that my life requires." She disclosed that she could no longer sing as a result of the effects of the treatments.

Francoise Hardy died of laryngeal cancer in Paris, on 11 June 2024, at the age of 80. Prior to her death she had also experienced several falls and bone fractures. Her son announced her death on Instagram, writing "Mom is gone…"

On 20 June 2024 a farewell ceremony took place at Père Lachaise Cemetery at the crematorium and columbarium building.

Selected discography

Main article: Françoise Hardy discography

• Untitled album (Tous les garçons et les filles (All The Boys And Girls)) (1962)
• Untitled album (Le premier bonheur du jour (The First Good Time Of The Day)) (1963)
• Untitled album (Françoise Hardy canta per voi in italiano (English: Françoise Hardy Sings For You In Italian) (1963)
• Untitled album (Mon amie la rose (My Friend The Rose) (1964)
• Untitled album (L'amitié (Friendship) (1965)
• In English (1966)
• Untitled album (La maison où j'ai grandi (The House Where I Grew Up)) (1966)
• Ma jeunesse fout le camp... (My Youth Is Leaving...) (1967)
• Untitled album (Comment te dire adieu (How To Say Goodbye To You)) (1968)
• Untitled album (La Question (The Question) (1971)
• Personne d'autre (Nobody Else) (2018)

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Director	Notes	Ref.
1963	Nutty, Naughty Chateau (Château en Suède)	Ophélie	Roger Vadim	—
1964	The Hully Gully Boys (I Ragazzi Dell'Hully Gully )	Herself	Marcello Giannini and Carlo Infascelli	musical performer
1965	This Crazy, Crazy World of Song (Questo Pazzo, Pazzo Mondo Della Canzone)		Bruno Corbucci and Giovanni Grimaldi
	What's New Pussycat?	Judge's secretary	Clive Donner	cameo appearance
	Highest Pressure (Altissima Pressione)	Herself	Enzo Trapani	musical performer
1966	Devil at My Heels (Une balle au cœur)	Anna	Jean-Daniel Pollet	—
	Masculine Feminine	American officer's companion	Jean-Luc Godard	cameo appearance
	Europe Sing (Europa Canta)	Herself	José Luis Merino	musical performer
	Grand Prix	Lisa	John Frankenheimer	—
1968	Monte Carlo: It's The Rose (Monte Carlo: C'est La Rose)	Herself	Michael Pfleghar	television special
1969	The Man Who Came From Cher (L'Homme Qui Venait du Cher)	Suzanne	Pierre Desfons	television film
1972	The Doves (Les Colombes )	Young hippie	Jean-Claude Lord	cameo appearance
1976	If I Had to Do It All Over Again (Si C'Était à Refaire)	Herself	Claude Lelouch	musical performer

Published works

Astrological

• Le grand livre de la Vierge (The Great Book Of The Virgin) (with Béatrice Guénin) (1979)
• Entre les lignes, entre les signes (Between The Lines, Between The Signs) (with Anne-Marie Simond) (1986)
• L'astrologie universelle (Universal Astrology) (1987)
• Les rythmes du zodiaque (The Rhythms Of The Zodiac) (2003)

Non-fiction

• Notes secrètes: entretiens avec Eric Dumont (Secret Notes: Interviews With Eric Dumont) (1991) (interview)
• Le désespoir des singes... et autres bagatelles (The Despair Of The Monkeys... And Other Trifles) (2008) (autobiography)
• Avis non autorisés... (Unauthorized Reviews...) (2015) (essay)
• Un cadeau du ciel... (A Gift From Heaven...) (2016) (essay)
• Chansons sur toi et nous (Songs About You And Us) (2021) (songbook)

Novels

• L'amour fou (Crazy Love) (2014)

See also

• French fashion
• French rock music
• List of astrologers
• List of baroque pop artists
• List of folk rock artists
• List of French singers
• List of yé-yé singers

Bibliography

• Briggs, Jonathyne (2015). Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music in France, 1958–1980. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199377060.
• Deluxe, Jean-Emmanuel (2013). Yé-Yé Girls of '60s French Pop. Feral House. ISBN 978-1936239719.
• Hardy, Françoise (2018) [2008]. The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir by Françoise Hardy [Le désespoir des singes... et autres bagatelles] (eBook). Translated by Graham, Jon E. Feral House. ISBN 978-1-62731-0734.
• Lesueur, Daniel (2015). Françoise Hardy: Catch a Rising Star (in French). Camion Blanc. ISBN 978-2357797666. Retrieved 31 May 2021.
• Quinonero, Frédéric (2017). Françoise Hardy, un long chant d'amour (eBook) (in French). Éditions l'Archipel. ISBN 978-2809822267.

External links

• Official website (in French)
• Françoise Hardy at AllMovie
• Françoise Hardy at AllMusic
• Françoise Hardy at Discogs
• Françoise Hardy at IMDb
• Françoise Hardy at Last.fm
• Françoise Hardy at the Official Charts Company
• Françoise Hardy at Rate Your Music