On June 11, Françoise Hardy died at the age of 80.Mom is gone“, Thomas Dutronc had soberly announced by sharing a photo of the singer and him as a baby. Three months later, the 51-year-old artist is releasing his fifth album on Friday, entitled It’s never too late. A record that Françoise Hardy did not have time to listen to, as Thomas Dutronc recounts in an interview published in The Parisian this Tuesday, September 10: “It wasn’t finished yet. I almost came to sing to her with my guitar and I didn’t… She had hearing problems lately. I especially wanted to finish a beautiful record for her. I know she would have liked some songs, others less or that she would have liked them later. Her judgments could be a little harsh. For example, she didn’t like “Demain” at all, the single from my second album. She kept complaining. When we played it with my father on stage, she liked the new arrangements.“
Thomas Dutronc had to finalize his album in the days following his mother’s death: “It was mixing, choosing arrangements. That’s my job. But there were some tough moments.“The interpreter of In your eyes then recalled a heartbreaking exchange with Françoise Hardy shortly before her death: “One evening in Châtellerault, after a concert, three weeks before she died, she sent me a text message around 1 a.m.: “I love you more than anything.” I replied: “Me too, my dear mother,” with photos of me as a baby with her. Then I received another message: “I’m dying.” I was panicked at the thought of not seeing him again. But she perked up and I had time to say goodbye. I told her several times that she didn’t have to worry about me, that I loved her.“
As Françoise Hardy’s health deteriorated day by day, Thomas Dutronc tried to mentally prepare himself for his mother’s departure, in vain: “It’s impossible actually. The weekend before she died, we watched the Roland-Garros final together. She had trouble speaking but she still made us laugh. She fought a lot. She didn’t want to die. But her wish was that we wouldn’t persist. We didn’t perform euthanasia. In the last days, the cancer was taking up too much space, the doctors saw that she was suffering too much, that it was the end. They accompanied her…“
