Françoise Hardy


Françoise Madeleine Hardy is a French singer-songwriter. She made her musical debut in the early 1960s on Disques Vogue and found immediate success with her song "Tous les garçons et les filles". As a leading figure of the yé-yé movement, Hardy "found herself at the very forefront of the French music scene" and became "France's most exportable female singing star", recording in various languages, appearing in movies, touring throughout Europe, and gaining plaudits from musicians such as Bob Dylan, Miles Davis and Mick Jagger. With the aid of photographer Jean-Marie Périer, Hardy began modeling and soon became a popular fashion icon as well.
As the yé-yé era drew to a close in the late 1960s, Hardy sought to reinvent herself, casting off the fashionable, girl-next-door image that Périer had created for her and abandoning the "cute" and catchy compositions that had characterized her repertoire up to that point. She began working with more accomplished songwriters such as Serge Gainsbourg and Patrick Modiano. Her 1971 album La question represented an important turning point in her career, moving towards a more mature style; it remains her most acclaimed work and has generated a dedicated cult following over the years. The early 1970s also marked the beginning of Hardy's renowned involvement with astrology, becoming an expert and writer on the subject over the years.
Hardy remains a popular figure in music and fashion and is considered an icon of French pop and of the 1960s. The singer is also considered a gay icon and has "repeatedly declared that her most devoted friends and fans are gay". Several of her songs and albums have appeared in critics' lists.

Biography

Hardy was born and grew up in the 9th arrondissement of Paris with her younger sister Michèle. Her parents lived apart when she was young; her father contributed little financially to the family and had little to do with his daughters. He was, however, persuaded by the girls' mother to buy Françoise a guitar for her birthday as a reward for passing her baccalauréat.
Her early musical influences were the French chanson stars Charles Trenet and, as well as Anglophone singers Paul Anka, the Everly Brothers, Cliff Richard, Connie Francis, Elvis Presley, and Marty Wilde, whom she heard on the English-language radio station Radio Luxembourg.
After a year at the Sorbonne, she answered a newspaper advertisement looking for young singers. Hardy signed her first contract with the record label Vogue in November 1961. In April 1962, shortly after she left university, her first record, "Oh Oh Chéri", appeared, written by Johnny Hallyday's writing duo. Her own flip side of the record, "Tous les garçons et les filles", became a success, riding the wave of yé-yé music in France. It sold over a million copies and was awarded a gold record. The track peaked at No. 36 in the UK Singles Chart in 1964. She reportedly hated the song, saying that it was recorded "in three hours with the worst four musicians in Paris". She was dating photographer Jean-Marie Périer at this time, and his shots are featured on many of her record sleeves.
Hardy sings in French, English, Italian, German and has two interpretations in Spanish and one in Portuguese. Her recordings in Italian, completed in Paris in 1963 under the production of Ezio Leoni, remain to this day highly acclaimed. In 1963, she represented Monaco in the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing fifth with "L'amour s'en va". In 1963, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque from the Académie Charles Cros.
In 1994, she collaborated with the British pop group Blur for their "La Comedie" version of "To the End". In 1995, she sang on Malcolm McLaren's single "Revenge of the Flowers". The song appears on his concept album Paris. In May 2000, she made a comeback with the album Clair-obscur, on which her son played guitar and her husband sang the duet "Puisque vous partez en voyage". Iggy Pop and Étienne Daho also took part. She has also recorded a duet with Perry Blake, who wrote two songs for Tant de belles choses. For this album, Hardy won the trophy Female Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la musique ceremony in 2005.
In 2012, Hardy marked her 50-year career by releasing her 27th album, L'Amour fou; she also wrote and published a book of the same title.
On 5 March 2015, after two years of silence, a second book was published under the title Avis non-autorisé.... In this book, she reflects on old age, her interests and her annoyances.
Because of her difficult upbringing, Hardy became painfully shy – a trait which is still part of her character today. When asked about her shyness in an interview with John Andrew, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2011, she said:

I thought at first my parents were divorced – at that time it was not a good thing, it was a kind of shame. My father didn't help much financially my mother, and all the other girls, little girls, were dressed differently than I was – their parents had more money...I didn’t enjoy at all everything, the trappings, when all of a sudden you become very famous... it 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... I feel happy when I'm on my bed, in my room with a good book.

After a serious illness in March 2015, she stated that she had no desire at all to write songs. She regained her health after two years and began returning to the recording studio in November 2017.

Personal life

In 1981, she married her long-time partner Jacques Dutronc, who is the father of her son Thomas Dutronc, born in 1973. Hardy lives in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and Dutronc in Monticello, Corsica, but they reportedly remain legally married.

Autobiography

Music

Hardy is mentioned in a poem "Some other kinds of songs" by Bob Dylan, which appears on the back cover of his album Another Side of Bob Dylan, released in 1964.

Films

Françoise Hardy made her film debut in 1963, after having been chosen by director Roger Vadim to take the role of Ophélie in his movie Nutty, Naughty Chateau. She then did three to four performances as singer in some musicarelli in Italy, for example, Questo pazzo, pazzo mondo della canzone in 1965. This same year, Hardy played a minor role as the Mayor's assistant in Clive Donner’s film What's New Pussycat? and then had a supporting role in A Bullet Through the Heart, directed by Jean-Daniel Pollet. In 1966, she made a cameo appearance in a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's film Masculin, féminin, then participated in Grand Prix, a US blockbuster focusing on Formula 1 racing and the lives of the drivers, directed by John Frankenheimer, in which she plays Lisa, the girlfriend of Nino Barlini, a fictional Italian driver. Following this role, Françoise Hardy did not want to make films anymore, but in 1972 she had a cameo role as a hippie in the film Les Colombes by the Québécois filmmaker Jean-Claude Lord. This was her final appearance on the screen apart from in Claude Lelouch’s 1976 film If I Had to Do It All Over Again, where she appears as a singer performing a song.
In a scene from director John G. Avildsen's film Save the Tiger, Jack Lemmon's character Harry Stoner makes a reference to Hardy during a melancholy telephone call to his wife. Her song "Tous les garçons et les filles" played during the British film Metroland and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. The French movie 8 Femmes features her song "Message Personnel" as sung by the French actress Isabelle Huppert. Her recording of "Träume" plays during the end credits of François Ozon's Water Drops on Burning Rocks .
Her song "L'Amitié" is played during the end credits of Denys Arcand's movie The Barbarian Invasions, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003.
Her recording of the song "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux", composed by Louis Aragon, is played in the Norwegian film Tatt av Kvinnen. In the award-winning Greek film Attenberg, her song "Tous les garçons et les filles" is played and sung by the two main characters in a lament of adolescent longing and loneliness.
In Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, her song "Le temps de l'amour" features prominently. The film's two lead characters, a pair of 12-year-old runaways, dance on the beach and have a romantic interlude as the song plays on a portable turntable. The female lead calls The "Yeh-Yeh" Girl from Paris! her "favorite record album", and it is the only album she packs when preparing to run away from home.

Television

Hardy's song "Ce Petit Cœur" was featured in the Gilmore Girls episode "French Twist". Her song "Ma jeunesse fout le camp" was also played in the television series La Femme Nikitas third season episode "Beyond the Pale", when Nikita pulls out an old record and plays the song. "Le Temps de l'amour" featured in the closing sequence of the first season finale of Helix. Her song "All Because of You" was covered by Jessica Sula and appeared in the first episode of the sixth season of Skins. Sula's character, Grace Blood, covered the song to submit as her music final in college, but wasn't able to finish it due to a fatal car accident. "Tous les garçons et les filles" also appeared in the final episode of the 2015 British mini-series The Enfield Haunting. Her song "Voilà" appears in the British television series The End of the F***ing World. Her song "Il Voyage" is featured in the first episode of the BBC America series Killing Eve in the scene that shows Villanelle's character walking to her apartment in Paris.

Fashion

Hardy's style is mentioned as inspiration for many fashion figures such as André Courrèges, Paco Rabanne, Alexa Chung and Nicolas Ghesquière, former head of the couture house Balenciaga and currently creative director of Louis Vuitton.

Discography

Studio albums

Soundtrack appearances