French pop stars9/24/2023 ![]() ![]() "I dream of losing myself, if only I can lose myself with you," she sings on L’Amitié’s "Tu Peux Bien". On Tous Les Garçon Et Les Filles' "La Fille Avec Toi" she reaches out to an ex only to see him with another girl, bemoaning how beautiful she is. Like all introverts, she seems most alone when surrounded by others, her insecurities ricocheting off those around her. Observers have emphasized Hardy’s anti-social nature as a celebrity, but you can hear it even in her music. Her songwriting is profoundly lonely, frequently insecure. No matter her inspiration, Hardy’s music is bound together by her point of view, which is part of what makes her fascinating. But with L’Amitié she zigzags between all these references: She’s the cowgirl guitar-heroine on her cover of "Non Ce N’est Pas Un Rêve", a dreamy wall-of-sound pop charmer on "Le Temps De Souvenirs", and folk singer on "L’Amitié". Elsewhere, she dips her toes in plucky Western country-rock on "Pas Gentille" and "Tu Ne Dis Rien". "Mon Amie La Rose", based on the poem by Cecile Caulker and Jacques Lacome, and "La Nuit Est Sur La Ville" are terrifically spooky and cinematic, the latter depicting Hardy wrestling with cheating with a man on a lonely dark night. On Mon Amie La Rose she explores a Morricone influence that was inchoate on Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles. Elsewhere, the record boasts electric organ arrangements on snappy jazz-inspired tracks like "L’Amour Ne Dure Pas Toujours" and "Comment Tant D’Autres". Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour pulls from American girl groups, echoing the Crystals and the Ronettes on "L’Amour D’Un Garçon", "Nous Tous", and "On Dit De Lui". Still, each has a different story to tell about Hardy’s musical influences at the time. Such is the case for her next three records, Le Premiere Bonheur Du Jour, Mon Amie La Rose, and L’Amitié. Because of this, some of these records feel disjointed, a side effect from compiling songs that weren’t initially made to sit next to each other. ![]() The five albums that make up Hardy’s reissues are really compilations of four-track, seven-inch singles. "Yes but me, I’m single with a tormented soul, yes but me, I’m single because nobody loves me." "They walk in love without fear of tomorrow," she sings in French of the young couples she watches on the street. The title track "Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles" remains an iconic vision of Hardy's aesthetic: frank music for romantic wallflowers. Her lyrics would never hew this close to yé-yé traditions again: See the "whoa-oh-oh" echoing on tracks like "Il Est Tout Pour Moi" and her cover of Bobby Lee Trammell’s "Oh Oh Chéri". That debut showcases Hardy at her simplest, wringing rockabilly-tinged pop magic from modest jazz percussion and steel guitar. Hardy wrote most of her own material, setting her far apart from her peers, and on her debut she penned every song but two. From there, the infamously timid Hardy became one of the few French pop stars of the era to cross over, jetting from England to France to record, serving as a muse to designers like Yves Saint Laurent, and inspiring Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger. The Parisian singer auditioned for Vogue Records at 18 and went on to top charts with her very first release, a 1962 self-titled record now known as Tous Les Garcons Et Les Filles based on its hit song. She wasn’t quite a black sheep of the genre, but she certainly complicated the formula. When the songs weren’t sexually charged jokes, they were melodramatic pop ballads about youth, from Chantal Goya’s unpredictable heartache to Sylvie Vartan’s simple dance-driven desires.Īnd then there was Françoise Hardy. ![]() France Gall sang of swallowing "lollipops", Chantal Kelly sang of telling an older lover she’s only 15, Clothilde was forced to sing bloody fables. They were teenage girls, dressed up in bows and baby doll dresses, singing flirty songs about love and adolescence penned typically by adult male songwriters. In the 1960s, French yé-yé pop stars had a particular shtick.
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