Françoise Hardy, who celebrates her 80th birthday this Wednesday, is back in the news, declaring that she is experiencing a “nightmare” following pharyngeal cancer, wanting to “leave soon and quickly” in a shocking interview with Paris Match in December. More joyful, several artists – from her son Thomas Dutronc to Clara Luciani or Keren Ann – will celebrate her at the Hyper Weekend, a festival at Radio France in Paris, on January 28.
On October 28, 1962, on the only TV channel of the time, All the boys and girls was the interlude while awaiting the results of the referendum for the transition of the election of the President of the Republic to universal suffrage. It’s a plebiscite. Françoise Hardy, who then composed and wrote her texts, was 18 years old. Success falls on him and his destiny changes. A year before, she pushed open the door of Vogue, telling herself that she could be signed by this record company which, in her eyes, was not very careful about certain productions.
This is another title from 1962, which will resonate for a long time. “It’s the time for love, the time for friends, and for adventure…” thus appears in the soundtrack to the film Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Wes Anderson. The “surf” guitar chords, popular with Californian musicians of the time, come from an instrumental, Fort Chabrol, by a certain Jacques Dutronc, who worked at Vogue. This working relationship later turned into marriage with a son, Thomas, who also became a singer. A union with ups and downs. “I have probably not mentioned Françoise enough here, who saved my life,” concludes Dutronc in his autobiography Et moi, et moi, et moi.
Cécile Caulier remained largely unknown to the general public until her death in 2009. However, it was she who wrote this ballad, proposed in vain to many artists and adopted by Françoise Hardy in 1964. The song will experience several lives, notably a cover by Natacha Atlas in 1999. But it is Françoise Hardy’s version that Shurik’n, pillar of the rap group IAM, recently highlighted on France Inter. “A song I grew up with. My mother listened to it all the time, (a song which) makes us think about our way of living and approaching life and death.
Song from 1968, Comment te dire adieu is written by Serge Gainsbourg. This piece is an adaptation of It hurts to say goodbye by the American Margaret Whiting. “Your Pyrex heart/resists fire/I’m very perplexed/I don’t want to/resolve to say goodbye”: the rhymes in “ex” mischievously split the sentences in two in this song which has become one of the hits of the year. And it is the Hardy version that Jimmy Somerville, the former leader of Bronski Beat, covers, with chorus in French but with a dance rhythm, twenty years later.
“It did me a lot of good to put into words the frustrations and pains of my personal life, but it was also as beautiful and moving a message as possible that I addressed to the object of my torments,” said in 2021 Françoise Hardy at AFP. This “Personal Message”, a jewel of the repertoire composed with Michel Berger, was addressed to Jacques Dutronc in 1973. “If you believe one day that you love me/Don’t wait a day, not a week (…) Come find me,” she intones. A real bond unites them today, even if the singer has started a new life in Corsica. “Jacques was, still is, the man of my life and our bond seems indestructible to me,” she confessed in 2021.
