PARIS | Françoise Hardy celebrates her 80th birthday on Wednesday. This is the opportunity to return to the singer's classics All boys and girls has personal message.
The artist returned to the news, explaining in a shock interview with Paris Match in December that she was experiencing a “nightmare” due to throat cancer and wanted to “leave soon and quickly.”
Even more joyful is that several artists – from her son Thomas Dutronc to Clara Luciani or Keren Ann – will celebrate her on January 28th at Hyper Weekend, a Radio France festival in Paris.
Referendum for all boys and girls
On October 28, 1962, this song was broadcast on the only television channel of the time as an interlude awaiting the results of the referendum on the transition from the election of the President of the Republic to universal suffrage.
It is a referendum for all boys and girls. Françoise Hardy, who composed and wrote her lyrics at the time, was 18 years old. Success falls to him and his fate changes.
A year earlier, she opened the door to Vogue and told herself that she could be signed by this record company, which, in her eyes, was not very careful about certain productions.
Dutronc and The Time of Love
This is another song from 1962 that will resonate for a long time. “Tis the time for love, the time for friends and adventure…” appears in the soundtrack of the film Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Wes Anderson.
The “surf” guitar chords popular with Californian musicians at the time came from an instrumental piece, that of Fort Chabrol, by one Jacques Dutronc, who worked at Vogue.
This working relationship later led to a marriage with a son, Thomas, who also became a singer. A connection with ups and downs.
“I probably haven’t mentioned Françoise enough here, who saved my life,” concludes Dutronc in his autobiography “Et moi, et moi, et moi.”
The forgotten author of My Friend the Rose
Cécile Caulier remained largely unknown to the general public until her death in 2009. However, it was she who wrote this ballad, which was suggested in vain to many artists and adopted by Françoise Hardy in 1964.
The song will experience multiple lives, including a 1999 cover by Natacha Atlas.
But it is the version of Françoise Hardy that Shurik'n, pillar of the rap group IAM, recently highlighted at France Inter. “A song I grew up with. My mother heard it all the time, [une chanson qui] makes us think about our way of life and our approach to life and death.
Dance version of How to Say Goodbye to You
The 1968 song Comment te dire adieu was written by Serge Gainsbourg. This play is an adaptation of It Hurts to Say Goodbye by American Margaret Whiting.
“Your Pyrex heart/resists the fire/I'm very perplexed/I don't want/I decide to say goodbye”: the rhymes in “ex” mischievously divide the phrases of this song, which has become one of the hits of two sentences per year.
And it is Hardy's version that Jimmy Somerville, the former leader of Bronski Beat, covers twenty years later with a French chorus but in dance rhythm.
The moving personal message
“It did me a lot of good to put into words the frustrations and pains of my private life, but it was also the most beautiful and moving message that I sent to the object of my torment,” Françoise Hardy told AFP in 2021.
This personal message, a jewel of the repertoire composed with Michel Berger, was addressed to Jacques Dutronc in 1973.
“If you ever think you love me/Don’t wait a day, don’t wait a week […] Come and find me,” she says.
Today they share a real bond, even though the singer has started a new life in Corsica. “Jacques was and still is the man of my life and our bond seems to me to be unbreakable,” she confessed to AFP in 2021.