The beloved French singer and fashion icon has died at the age of 80

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French pop singer, actress and model Françoise Hardy died on Tuesday (June 11) at the age of 80 after a long battle with cancer. Her son, musician Thomas Dutronc, announced her death in an emotional post on Instagram that included a photo of him as a baby in his mother’s arms with the message, “Mama est parti (Mama is gone).”

Hardy, one of the most versatile and beloved French artists of her generation, announced her diagnosis of lymphoma in 2004 and was briefly placed in an induced coma in 2015 when her condition worsened.

Born in Paris on January 17, 1944, in the midst of an air raid on the Nazi-occupied city, Hardy, by most accounts, had a sad childhood whose spell was broken when her absent father gave her a guitar after her early high school graduation. The singer got her break in 1961 when the Disques Vogue label signed the 18-year-old to a contract and she released the single “Tous les garçons et les filles”, which became an instant hit and sold over 2.5 million copies.

Known for her sad songs, Hardy became one of the leading stars of the Yé-yé style of music, whose name was inspired by the repeated chants of “yeah, yeah” in English-language pop songs of the era by the likes of the Beatles. More hits followed, including “Je Suis D’Accord” and “Le Temps de L’Amour” and in 1963 Hardy came fifth as a Monaco entrant in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

With her elegant, androgynous looks and a deadpan, vivacious style that caught the attention of young audiences with lyrics about heartache and teenage angst, movies came and director Roger Vadim cast the singer in his 1963 comedy. Chateau in Sweden (Nutty, naughty chateau), alongside established star Monica Vitti. As evidence of her growing popularity, Hardy began translating her songs into English (as well as German and Italian), and scored her first Top 10 hit in the UK in 1964 with “All Over the World”.

In addition to influencing (and cajoling) everyone from Bob Dylan to the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Hardy became a muse for fashion designers Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne as well, with famous photographers Richard Avedon and William Klein shooting her. the years. Dylan was so fascinated by it, in fact, that in his notes written in 1964 Another side of Bob Dylan The album included a poem in her honor that began, “For Françoise Hardy, at the edge of the Seine, the giant shadow of Notre Dame seeks to catch my feet.”

David Bowie was similarly enamored, once saying he was “passionately in love with her.” And so was every male in the world, and a number of females.”

After releasing a series of albums and EPs in France, Hardy’s first full-length release in the United States was in 1965, The “Yeh-Yeh” girl from Paris!a repackage of her first French album in 1962, Tous garçons and les filles; Her early albums were often released without titles and were often known for their more popular tracks. Her first album in English in 1965 in English, featured “All Over the World” and a number of other songs she co-wrote with collaborator Julianne Moore, including “This Little Heart”, “The Rose” and “Another Place”. It was followed in 1968 by another English album called Second English album And Will you love me tomorrow?. She had her biggest success in English in 1968 with “It Hurts to Say Goodbye” written by Serge Gainsbourg, which went to number one in France and the United Kingdom.

Working with a series of collaborators throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Hardy released dozens of albums exploring Brazilian funk, rock, disco, jazz and electronic pop before taking a six-year break before 1988. Badges LP, which followed in 1996 If it is dangerousWhich she said at the time would be her last album. She continued to release albums throughout the early 2000s, though her twenty-eighth and final studio collection, another personin 2018.

Talking to News agency In 1996, she explained her unusual songwriting style, in which she emphasized the importance of melody. “I always put words to music. It’s always like this. I don’t write before, and then, I look for music,” she said at the time, a method that gives her songs a unique quality, mixing poetry-like words with captivating melodies. “I get the music and (then) I try to put words to it.”

In addition to collaborating with everyone from Iggy Pop to Blur, Hardy has also appeared in films by famous directors such as Jean-Luc Godard (1966). Feminine masculine(and John Frankenheimer)Grand prize). The singer also developed an interest in astrology, writing a series of books on the subject as well as publishing novels and an autobiography, Monkey despair and other triflesIn 2018. She was the only French singer whose name was mentioned Rolling StoneThe 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time comes in at number 162 thanks to what the magazine said was “a breathless deadpan too emanating like Gaulois smoke”.

See Dutronc’s post and some of Hardy’s renderings below.