Françoise Hardy and the Yé Yé Era

 Françoise Hardy and I 

Nothing has the power to bounce you back to your teenage years like the music of that decade, and nothing sobers you up like learning of the passing of one of your adolescent icons. If you grew up in the 1960’s listening to the French pop singers of the decade, as I did, you had your favorite, just as you had your favorite Beatle. Sylvie Vartan, Chantal Goya, France Gall, Sheila, and Françoise Hardy, were everywhere, especially on the cover of Salut les Copains.

Although they were not a girl group, they were invariably swept together in press and publicity, emblematic of a fresh, upbeat yé yé generation, light years away from the moody chanteuses like Juliette Greco and Mireille Mathieu.    

Each cultivated her own style. Sylvie Vartan, the cute bleached blonde in glamorous outfits, Johnny Halliday’s girlfriend. France Gall and Chantal Goya with their identical page boy bangs, one blonde, one dark, like negative images of each other. Sheila, with whom I empathized, because she seemed more awkward than the others, as if, secretly, she sometimes had to struggle with her hair or her weight.

Françoise Hardy, on the other hand, was the epitome of cool. She stood out from the others with her tall, lean, slightly androgynous figure and style, akin to her contemporary Jane Birkin. One suspected there were darker depths to Francoise Hardy. You could say she was the George Harrison of the group. She is also the one whose classic style and thoughtful lyrics have survived the test of time. How fitting today to listen to her “Mon Amie la Rose,” with its intimations of mortality, inviting the listener to contemplate the short, lovely life of the rose. The beauty of the garden today, withered and denuded the next. “On est bien peu de chose….” Or, as Shakespeare put it: “We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” So true. RIP Françoise Hardy.