Françoise Hardy's career spanned six decades, and many of her songs have become classics of the French repertoire. Beyond her celebrated brand of melancholic pop, she was a style icon and an actress, one of France’s biggest stars. French singer-songwriter, model and actress Françoise Hardy has died at the age of 80.
Her death was announced by her son and musician Thomas Dutronc on social media. Dutronc wrote, captioning a photo of himself as a baby with his mother: “Maman est partie” (“Mum is gone”). Hardy revealed in June 2021 that she had been diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 2018, following a lymphoma diagnosis in 2004.
Born in 1944 in Paris, Hardy signed a contract with a record label as a teenager. Hardy had her first music hit with 'Tous les Garçons et les Filles' ('All the Boys and Girls') in 1962, when she was just 18. The ballad sold more than 2.
5 million copies and topped the French charts. Other singles like 'Je Suis D’Accord' and 'Le Temps de L’Amour' were also massive hits. Her rise to prominence continued in the 60s and her melancholy brand of pop catapulted her to the front of the European yé-yé movement – the generation of post-war French pop singers – named after the Beatles’ “yeah yeah yeah”.
Hardy recorded her work in English, German, and Italian. Her biggest hit in the English language was her 1968 song 'It Hurts to Say Goodbye' - written by Serge Gainsbourg. It went to No.
1 in both France and the UK. She quickly became.
