1962: Eighteen-year-old pop sensation Francoise Hardy burst onto the French music scene. Her breathy alto voice and stunning good looks made her an overnight star.
Born to a single mother in 1944 during the Nazi occupation of Paris, she learned to play a guitar that her estranged father gave her.
Hardy popularized what came to be known in France as the ‘ye-ye’ pop sound, so named because older listeners were bewildered by her singing ‘yeah, yeah’ in one of her songs.
She wrote most of her compositions, a rarity at the time even for men, and she played guitar.
Throughout the 1960s, Hardy released 15 albums in 13 years. Her first big hit was Tous les garçons et les filles (All the boys and girls).
Fashion designers and photographers clamored to work with her. She modeled for Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent, and Paco Rabanne among others. Richard Avedon photographed her for Vogue magazine.
Mick Jagger once called her the ideal woman.
Although she was intensely shy and retiring, Hardy became a superstar in France.
Outside of her native country and Europe, however, fame was slower to arrive. She’s virtually unknown in the United States. Even French-speaking Canadians know little about her.
One American fan was Bob Dylan. He was so smitten that he wrote her love letters.
On the back of his album Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) he wrote: “For Françoise Hardy, at the Seine’s edge, a giant shadow of Notre Dame…”
In 1966, he privately played her a then-unrecorded tune, Just Like a Woman, in his bedroom. Due to their mutual shyness, Hardy didn’t realize Dylan was wooing her.
She didn’t find him attractive.
Hardy had cameos in a few international films including Grand Prix and What’s New Pussycat? But acting held little appeal for her.
Hardy’s popularity faltered as the Sixties ended, but her career was revived in 1973 with a critically-praised album Message personnel.
She went on to record 28 studio albums, some in English but the vast majority in her native French.
Her primary interest outside of music was astrology, which she wrote was a “human science.”
Hardy spent two years in Paris being tutored by one of the world’s most renowned astrologers.
She also studied the reading of Tarot cards and graphology - discerning someone’s personality through their handwriting.
Hardy collaborated on astrology books and many magazine articles.
Beginning in 1982, she hosted a weekly French radio program called Entre les lignes, entre les signes (Between the lines, between the signs) in which she read celebrities’ astrological charts.
She also wrote four books about astrology that were published in 1979, 1986, 1987, and 2003.
Francoise Hardy released her best-selling autobiography in 2008.
Her last studio album was released in 2018.
The French consider her a national treasure.
She will turn 79 in January.
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