The fairest of them all?
I first heard her sing when I was in college. I had some friends who’d been to Europe and had brought back a few of her records. I didn’t much care for her music and promptly forgot about her, until I came across her name a few days ago on some Wiki site.
Stunning when young (lots of photos at the link), I think Francoise Hardy’s looks are even more extraordinary now that she’s in her late 60s (sixty-nine, to be exact).
The woman is absolutely incapable of taking a bad photo at any age, so it’s hard to choose, young or old. Bone structure, bone structure, bone structure! and being rail-thin helps.
This one will do for Hardy young:
And this:
And this one will do for recently (she’s 68 in this photo):
And at around 65:
When she was young, all the greats of rock and roll lusted after her (Malcolm McLaren: “I know for a fact that many of the groups who were notorious and slowly becoming successful, such as the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and many others were desperately interested in having Frané§oise Hardy become their girlfriend in some way”).
But her heart was given early on to fellow French singer Jacques Dutronc, with whom she began living in 1967 but didn’t marry until fourteen years later, which was eight years after their son was born. Even then, it seems to have been a vale of tears:
Her intense infatuation was matched by her partner’s coldness. Much of the singer’s 2008 autobiography, Le Désespoir des singes et autres bagatelles, focused on that period. Today it provides the theme for her twenty-seventh album and her first novel, both entitled L’Amour fou.
The novel took thirty years of writing, rehashing and rebuilding. It dissects a love story based on obsession and despair between a woman consumed by passion and a man keen to guard his distance. It doesn’t take much detective work to see that Hardy is telling her own story…
My goodness. So this women, the object of extremely generalized as well as highly specific desire (David Bowie: “I was for a very long time passionately in love with her, as I’m sure she’s guessed. Every male in the world, and a number of females also were, and we all still are”) chose as her lifelong partner a man who held himself at a remove.
Puzzling, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s not, not at all.
Never heard of her until today. Says a lot about me, huh?
But it strikes me that her features imply projection of personality upon her. The strong jaw, full (sensuous!) lips, intense gaze, casual hair may also be what young men wish to see after coitus, a sexual trophy.
If you fawn too much over someone, they believe they have power over you, and thus your own value decreases in their eyes. For what is easily obtained, is of little worth to humans that desire value and sacrifice.
Strangely enough, that is the same social dynamic between subjects and the State.
I do remember her name and face from the ’60s, though I never heard any of her music. Hers was one of those images which is heartbreaking on sight to a young man for its unattainable beauty. The irony of her own broken heart is awfully sad, and seems strange at first, but yet is so much the fate of us all, longing for something that we will never have in this world.
Maybe being longed for gets tiresome. Maybe she longed to long!
Long time Hardy fan. She was and is beautiful, but her voice is the sexiest thing about her and it has become sexier with age. In late 2006 she released a recording titled Parenthé¨ses which consists of duos with various (mostly) male vocalists. You don’t have to understand French to enjoy this recording, although a few of the songs are in English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNplzlaQbHg
Thanks for spotlighting Francoise. Next you need to discover Francis Cabrel. Start with the album titled Samedi Soir Sur La Terre.
High cheekbones. Did her grandmither ever tell her she had Cherokee blood?
Various dating and relationship gurus will tell you a slam-dunk is boring.
Les hautes pommettes et les nez proéminents sont des traits communs dans les Frances. High cheekbones and prominent noses are common traits in France. 😉
A high school French teacher (who was French, and every bit as beautiful as Hardy in her own way) brought in her guitar and had our summer-school class (all girls) singing Hardy’s “La Maison ou j’ai grandi” back in 1966 when it was quite new. I’ve never forgotten the words, and taught it to my own students many years later.
I didn’t realize that Jacques DuTronc, with whom she sang many duets, was cold towards her, and that hers was essentially an unrequited love. While the French hardly invented the phenomenon, my experience living in France for over 10 years is that it’s distressingly common. You know, I think if we look at the Don Juan myth (the other side of which is the “abandoned woman” myth) we can begin to get a handle on couples like Francoise and Jacques, even though Francoise wasn’t abandoned in any classic way (or maybe she was, I don’t know the couple’s history.) Myths are stubborn things that live themselves out through real lives.
I continue to be amazed by the variety of your postings–we can’t get the same mix from any other blogger!
BTW, Hardy had a small role in What’s New Pussycats starring Peter O’Toole and Peter Sellers. A throughly silly flashback to the mid-60s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgcSgZGxROs
Non sequitur: http://tinyurl.com/8tdzlwx
I should be ashamed for liking this song, but I’m not. I’ll leave it to neo to critique the choreography.
“While the French hardly invented the phenomenon, my experience living in France for over 10 years is that it’s distressingly common.”
Shortly after we married, we lived in La Rochelle for 2 years and observed the same thing. It is indeed common.
Like Neo, I’m not fond of her music. But I did run across this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi-p_jq5rsk
which is evocative of her personal style. I can see why many were smitten.
Try a little Emmylou Harris, sil vous plait.
Never heard of her before this.
1) She sings only in French, near as I can see. That doesn’t play all that well outside France, and even less so outside Europe.
2) Her singing style is … I dunno, “boring” is what comes to mind. All harmony and melody, no rhythm, at least in the half-dozen songs I randomly played. To each their own, of course, but, after the 60s this style hasn’t generally played well in the USA for sure, and even IN the 60s it was still more for the folk-song crowd.
}}} Puzzling, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s not, not at all.
No, women as a group tend to be idiots when it comes to their triage process for men. I honestly do think the worst thing that happened to both sexes was when the process got taken out of the hands of the matrons of society and put into the women’s hands. While the matrons didn’t pick for love, today’s woman cluelessly triages for seducers, and imagines it’s love. Then the seducers get bored (hey, they’re seducers… DUHHH!), then they fool around, and… of course, it’s that ALL men screw around. Not just the ones you SELECT FOR!!
To take any of the blame for bad choices … well, few women ever consider that option.
:-S
The other issue (likely the case for Francoise) is that she confused coldness with “playing hard to get”. She confused “hard to get” with just plain “hard”. Some guy that doesn’t seem all that interested in you may just not be interested in anyone. For whatever reason — Narcissism, Lack of sexual drive at all (Neuter-sexual), or even homosexuality would look the same if you’re not wise enough (or smart enough, take your pick) to verify which of those it is.
” a love story based on obsession and despair between a woman consumed by passion and a man keen to guard his distance.”
Wasn’t this aspect of human nature explored quite thoroughly — and comically — by William Shakespeare in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”?
I agree that she’s quite a beauty. That I have never heard of her until now makes me feel even more under-educated than I usually do.
Francois Hardy is close to the top, but the most beautiful woman at all ages remains Audrey Hepburn.
Though I was a teenybopper back then, and thought I was fairly up on things, I do not recall anything about Francois Hardy. I was not as hip as I thought, apparently.
Courtesy of My Sister the French Student, I recall listening to Jacqueline Francois. My sister heard her in French class, and got her hands on an album.
The Continental European singer that I was most aware of during that era was the Spanish singer Rafael, courtesy of time spent in Mexico.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fx5_iOrq3I Jacqueline Francois sings “Mademoiselle de Paris.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M_ZdI8Lr9g Rafael sings “Cuando Tu No Esté¡s.” [When You Aren’t Here]
I like your taste. I looked thru the link before reverting to your comments and my immediate thought when viewing her photos, was that magnificent bone structure. That in combination with her eyes would make her highly desirable.
I would like to add that her beautiful lower lip is also a turn-on. This was even before botox and fillers.
Greg Brown: http://tinyurl.com/ceu7aux
}}} I was not as hip as I thought, apparently.
No, Gringo. There are certain venues where interesting things can exist outside of English, but they are few and far between… music is one of them. If a performer has never done anything in English, then they’ve never done anything for an international audience, and, therefore, knowledge of them is not an inherent sign of “cool”.
There can be individual examples to the contradiction of that, but, for the most part, no… if you’re not doing it in English AT ALL, then you’re only playing to the home team.
“no… if you’re not doing it in English AT ALL, then you’re only playing to the home team.
From my POV that is a weird statement. Why?
Much of the world does doesn’t understand English.
http://tinyurl.com/25cgsj
Je t’aimais, je t’aime, je t’aimerai. What a pity if you can not understand and instead choose to disparage the beauty of our language. Think about how much of our english language comes from French… more than comes from German. Je t’aimais!