Song of the Day 6/15: Françoise Hardy, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Singer Françoise Hardy might have been the coolest person in a cool era, the pre-hippie 1960s. Pretty and waif-like, perfect shoulder-length hair, soulful eyes, legs meant for a miniskirt, demure, French.

Hardy, whose death this week at 80 sparked a lot of happy recollections, was the most important of the “ye-ye girls,” whose airy, delicate, wistful songs – influenced by the French chanson and American and British pop – made France a major player in the pop music world for the first time. Even actress/sexpot Brigitte Bardot got into the act.

Mick Jagger called Hardy his ideal woman. Bob Dylan wrote a poem to her in the liner notes for his album “Another Side of Bob Dylan.” ”For Françoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge, a giant shadow of Notre Dame … ”

She symbolized French youth for new wave director Jean-Luc Godard, who used her in some of his films, She has been been muse to director Wes Anderson in our own time. Hardy remained a well-regarded singer for many years, especially in Europe. She also became a fashion icon, a magnet for photographers. Oh, and a future Nobel Prize winner, novelist Patrick Modiano, wrote some of her early lyrics, although nobody at the time knew just how cool that was.

“Tous les Garcons et les Filles” was Hardy’s first hit. It topped the French charts for 15 weeks in 1962 and ’63, about the time the somewhat similar Jacques Brel started making his big splash in France. Hardy, 18 at the time, first performed the song on television during a break in coverage of results of a referendum about direct election of the French president. Jimmy Page, roving session man, played guitar on the recording.

The Eurythmics covered it in 1985.

Wes Anderson used Hardy’s “Le Temps de L’amour” for a key scene in “Moonrise Kingdom.” This one adds a bit of rock flavor. You might think you’re hearing the Ventures at the beginning.

Anderson must have had Hardy in mind later when he made “The French Dispatch,” about a New Yorker-type magazine based in Paris. The soundtrack features French songs of Hardy’s era, while Jarvis Cocker, a founder of the rock group Pulp, included Hardy’s “Mon Ami la Rose” on an entire album of such songs commissioned by Anderson as movie tie-in.