PARIS – French singer Francoise Hardy, whose crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics shot her to international stardom in the 1960s, has died at the age of 80, according to her son.
But Hardy was a reluctant superstar, who dreamed of domestic bliss even as she chalked up chart hits. The single sold a million copies, making Hardy an instant star of the “ye-ye” generation of post-war French pop singers. More hits followed, from the ballad Mon Amie La Rose to Comment Te Dire Adieu , about the pain of separation from a man with a “heart of pyrex”, with lyrics provided by the bad-boy of French pop, Serge Gainsbourg.On the cover of his Another Side album in 1964, he wrote a poem starting: “For Francoise Hardy/At the Seine’s edge/A giant shadow/Of Notre-Dame”.The pair married and had a son Thomas, who also became a musician.
Dutronc penned one of her hits, Le Temps De L’amour , which American director Wes Anderson revived for a new generation in his 2012 movie Moonrise Kingdom.Eric Carmen, Raspberries frontman and All By Myself singer, dies at 74 Hardy was the only French artiste to appear in a 2023 ranking of the 200 greatest singers of all time published by Rolling Stone magazine.