It was his son Thomas Dutronc who announced the sad news by posting on social networks an image of him as a child, with his mother, and this message followed by hearts: “Mom’s gone…” Singer Françoise Hardy, yé-yé icon, died at the age of 80, this Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
“Even if I have to let go of your hand/Without being able to say “See you tomorrow”/Nothing will ever break our bonds/Even if I have to go further”she sang in So many beautiful thingssublime title, very spiritual, evoking the afterlife.
With the death of Françoise Hardy, melancholy is no longer quite what it was… Its best ambassador has vanished.
No French singer has carried so high this dreamy sadness which animated Françoise Hardy throughout her career, she who never stopped singing about the quest for inaccessible love, her unique or almost unique Source of inspiration. For this, she had three assets: a pen of rare elegance, a love of catchy melody, a captivating voice.
Singing Love with a capital A
Françoise Hardy thus proved that it was not necessary to have powerful singing to touch the listener. His, crystalline, soft, melodious, knew how to wonderfully carry this powerful feeling that is Love.
Her voice, immediately recognizable, always well placed, was of infinite grace and delicacy. In the ranking of the two hundred greatest singers of all time, produced by the magazine Rolling Stone at the start of 2023, France is only represented by Françoise Hardy, 162 e … The musicality of his voice also moved the Anglo-Saxons.
It all really began for her in June 1962 when, as a young woman of 18, she appeared with the irresistible All the boys and girls. “A one-off song and not at all timeless, she would say later. A little song…”
It was obviously not to be believed as this title marked its era with already, implicitly, the expectation of love. A song that propelled her to fame and made her a pioneer: women who wrote their own songs and made them hits were rare in the early 1960s. Barbara would not arrive until a few years later.
Icon of the sixties
It was during these years that she met her first lover: Jean-Marie Périer, star photographer of Hi buddies, which helps it grow and enhances its image. Françoise Hardy became an icon of the sixties, including in England. Thanks to his songs, but also to his elegance and his taste for the sexy outfits that the great couturiers make him wear. Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and so many others… are under the spell.
She published six albums (including one in English) in six years, releasing hits (The first happiness of the day, My friend the rose…), gives concerts all over the world. From this period (1962-1966), Françoise Hardy only keeps one song (Friendship) in a compilation (Personal messages) from 2002 which she considers a good summary of her records: “In what I recorded, there is a lot of waste”she judged as always so harsh with herself.
His meeting with Jacques Dutronc
My youth leaves (1967), released at age 23, is his farewell to the yéyé years. It was also the year of her meeting with Jacques Dutronc, with whom she had a son, Thomas, also a musician and singer. The following year, tired of touring, she stopped performing. She doesn’t know that she won’t come back there again.
From the 1970s, if the album Sun brand, Françoise Hardy especially retained The question, recorded with her friend, Brazilian guitarist Tuca. Her favorite record, shrouded in a veil of sadness, her lover being most often absent.
Markant is the album she made with Michel Berger, who offered her this masterpiece that is Personal message (1973). Like the Gabriel Yared period, a great composer who gives him splendid ballads and leads him towards more rhythmic music, sometimes jazzy-funky arrangements and texts (with the complicity of Michel Jonasz) playing more with words. Five albums (1977-82), quite a bit of success, but a stormy collaboration.
From 1988 to 1996, nothing. Before the dark The danger (1996), with a blood-red cover, recorded with rock guitarist Rodolphe Burger, where she lets loose on her romantic frustrations. His last five albums (2004 to 2018) are peaks of melancholic elegance.
Because this “sentimental introvert”as she presented herself, “with easy tears when the feeling is touched”, loved to let himself be seduced by beautiful music – his guilty pleasure – which invariably inspired him with new words, of love obviously, flirting with the extraordinary musicality of his voice. “My voice, yes, she told us one day. I know that it has a midrange side, which can approach the frequencies of certain strings like the cello. »
Françoise Hardy suffered from lymphoma since 2004. And since 2019, pharyngeal cancer. Very diminished in recent years, she no longer went out. But, every day, from her Parisian apartment, she communicated by email with the man who was still her husband, Jacques Dutronc, who remained in Corsica. French song has just lost one of its greatest artists.
Françoise Hardy told her story in two books: The despair of the monkeys… and other triflesRobert Laffont, 2008 and A gift from heaven… Ecuador, 2016.
There are two box sets of his albums: The 62-66 collection (6 albums), Vogue/Sony; The essential box (1976-2006, 10 albums), Parlophone/Warner.
