Françoise Hardy

Françoise Hardy is a pop and fashion icon celebrated as a French national treasure. With her signature breathy alto, she was one of the earliest and most definitive French participants in the yé-yé movement (a style of pop music that initially emerged from Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal before spreading to France in the early 1960s). She is one of only a few female vocalists who could or would write and perform her own material. She offered a startling contrast to the boy’s club of French pop in the early ’60s, paving the way for literally thousands of women all over the globe. Known for romantically nostalgic songs and melancholy lyrics, Hardy’s first single, “Tous Les Garçons et les Filles,” sold over two million copies and made her a European star overnight. Outside music, Hardy also established herself as a fashion model, actress, astrologer, and author. Though she has recorded songs in several languages, it was her early French tunes — that ranged across pop, jazz, blues, and more — that helped to establish her as a legend. In the ’70s, she reinvented herself as an artist transcending teen-friendly pop to interpret songs by everyone from Leonard Cohen to Patrick Modiano and has remained a grande dame of French popular song ever since.

Hardy was born in Paris in 1944. She and her sister were raised by a single mom who made a meager living as an accountant’s assistant. Money was always in short supply.