French pop singer, actress and model Françoise Hardy died on Tuesday (June 11) at 80 after a long battle with cancer. Her son, musician Thomas Dutronc, announced her passing in a touching Instagram post featuring a picture of him as a baby in the arms of his mother with the message “Maman est partie (mom is gone).” See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news One of the most versatile and beloved French artists of her generation, Hardy went public with her lymphatic cancer diagnosis in 2004 and was briefly put in an induced coma in 2015 when her condition worsened.
Hardy was born in Paris on Jan. 17, 1944 in the midst of an air raid on the Nazi-occupied city and by most accounts had a melancholy childhood whose spell was broken when her absent father gifted her a guitar after her early high school graduation at 16. The singer got her break in 1961 when the Disques Vogue label signed the then-18-year-old and released the single “Tous les garçons et les filles,” which became an instant hit and sold more than 2.
5 million copies. Best known for her melancholy ballads, Hardy became one of the leading lights of the Yé-yé style of music, whose name was a spin on the frequent “yeah, yeah” chants in English language pop songs of the era by the likes of the Beatles. More hits followed, including “Je Suis D’Accord” and “Le Temps de L’Amour” and in 1963 Hardy came in fifth place as the entry from Monaco in that year’s Eurovision .