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Getty ImagesFrançoise Hardy, one of France’s most popular singer-songwriters, has died at the age of 80.
“Mom is gone,” her son Thomas Dutronc, also a musician, wrote on social media.
Hardy burst onto the music scene in 1962 and became a cultural icon, inspiring the likes of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan. Known for her melancholic ballads, she symbolizes France Yes Yes (Yes, that’s right) The pop movement, so called because of its homage to British music.
Her best-known songs include “Tous les garçons et les filles” (Tous les garçons et les filles), “Comment te dire adieu” (Comment te dire adieu) and “Mon amie la Rose” (My Friend the Rose).
Her biggest hit in the UK was “All Over The World”, an English version of her song “Dans le monde entier”, which reached number 16 in the charts in June 1965.
Hardy was born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944 and was raised by his mother.
Like many girls at the time, she grew up listening to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and other American and British stars on Radio Luxembourg, aged just 17 She signed her first record deal.
She made her mark as a musician in 1962 with a simple and sad song, “Tous les garçons et les filles”, in which she sang about all the boys and girls walking hand in hand, while “I walk alone in the street, I My heart aches.” It was an instant hit in France and even topped the charts in the UK.
Her style attracted fashion designers, and she modeled for the likes of Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne, who designed a gold-leaf mini dress for her.
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger once called her an “ideal woman,” while singer-songwriter Bob Dylan wrote her several love letters.
He paid tribute to her in a poem on the back of his 1964 album The Other Side of Bob Dylan.
AlamyOne of her most memorable performances was 1968’s “Comment te dire adieu,” a French version of an English song by Serge Gainsbourg. But Gainsbourg’s song has been covered many times since, a painful farewell to a man with a “pyrex heart.”
She has collaborated with various artists including Blur and Iggy Pop.
Hardy is also an actor who has appeared in films by directors such as Jean-Loup Gouda, Roger Vadim and John Frankenheimer, as well as a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
One of the subjects she wrote about was astrology, which she became interested in in the 1970s.
She was married once to singer Jacques Dutronc, with whom she has a son, Thomas. They separated in the late 1980s, but she often referred to her ex-husband as the love of her life.
Hardy had been ill for some time before her death and revealed in 2004 that she had been diagnosed with lymphoma.
In 2015, she fell and fell into a coma for several weeks.
Her career spanned more than fifty years, during which she released nearly 30 albums. Hardy’s last album, Personne D’Autre (Nobody Else), was released in 2018.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked her as one of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2023, ranking her at No. 162.
After news of Hardy’s death broke, French Culture Minister Rachida Dati wrote on social media: “How to say goodbye to her? The eternal Françoise Hardy, the French song legend who won Her sensitivity and her melodies penetrated the hearts of the entire nation.
