(Paris) “Enormous sadness”, “singular voice”, “legend of French song”: France mourns on Wednesday the disappearance of Françoise Hardy, one of its last icons of the sixties, announced the day before.
“Mom is gone”: it was with these simple words on his social networks, with a photo of him as a child with his mother, that his son Thomas Dutronc made the news official late Tuesday evening.
This death, at age 80, after battling cancer that appeared in 2004, comes almost a year after that of Jane Birkin (July 2023), another icon of the sixties.
“How to Say Goodbye to You”, his 1968 standard, returns on Wednesday in press headlines and in tributes on social networks.
“How do I say goodbye to him? », Posted Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture, hailing a “legend of French song”.
“French icon, singular voice with fierce tranquility, Françoise Hardy will have rocked generations of French people for whom she will remain anchored in moments of life,” greets Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
“The elegance” of its “harmonious whispers will resonate forever in the hearts of boys and girls of all ages,” writes musician Jean-Michel Jarre. “Someone I loved infinitely has just left,” confides singer Julien Clerc.
A nod to her instant success in 1962, the year she turned 18: more than two million copies sold for All the Boys and Girls, which Françoise Hardy had written and composed, a rare occurrence at the time .
The death of the artist shakes France (“It’s my whole childhood”, confides Gabriel Attal, “Your songs have never stopped accompanying me”, laments singer Patrick Bruel), but resonates well beyond of the. If Jane Birkin was the French’s favorite Englishwoman, Françoise Hardy was the Anglo-Saxon’s favorite Frenchwoman.
In the ranking of the 200 best singers of all time by the American magazine Rolling Stone in 2023, she was the only representative of France.
Written by Serge Gainsbourg, Comment te dire adieu will be covered, with a dance rhythm, by Jimmy Somerville, the former leader of Bronski Beat, twenty years later.
In 1994, the group Blur invited her on their title To the end (The comedy).
“It’s the time for love, the time for friends, and for adventure…”, a song from 1962, also appears in the soundtrack of the film Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Wes Anderson.
No surprise, then, to see American rap legend Chuck D (Public Enemy) pay tribute to the woman whose records have brought joy to “rhythm scouts in the United States”.
Françoise Hardy was not simply a delicate voice or half of an intriguing celebrity couple that she formed with Jacques Dutronc.
She was also the ambassador of French and pop elegance internationally, a “feminine ideal” for Mick Jagger, a fantasy figure for Bob Dylan or David Bowie.
In the carefree sixties, his melancholy stood out. Her androgynous physique and her restraint moved away from the shapes and exuberance of Brigitte Bardot (89 years old today). She foreshadowed the slender models who would soon invade the catwalks.
A fashion muse without ever wanting to be, the singer will perfectly wear futuristic slatted dresses by Paco Rabanne.
Her bangs (she later sported a boyish cut) made the front pages of magazines. The artist was first photographed in France by her boyfriend at the time, Jean-Marie Périer, and internationally by the famous William Klein.
His great love story was then called Jacques Dutronc (81 years old today), who also just shook up the charts with Et moi, et moi, et moi (1966). They will have a child, Thomas, himself a singer.
But their relationship is a source of disillusionment because of the distance that the dandy of French song puts.
This bittersweet married life will permeate all of his work, from Personal Message, a huge success from 1973, composed with Michel Berger, to Nobody Else, title of the last eponymous album in 2018.
Despite their separation, without divorce, a real bond still united him with Jacques Dutronc.
Françoise Hardy, for whom singing was not natural, quickly abandoned the stage.
This astrology enthusiast, born under the sign of Capricorn, spoke frankly about her cancer. And the idea of the end.
“Death is only that of the body, which is of a material essence. When dying, the body releases the soul which is of spiritual essence. But the fact remains that the death of the body is a considerable ordeal and I dread it as much as everyone else,” she confided to AFP.