Francoise Hardy, French singer and 60s pop icon, dies aged 80
French singer Francoise Hardy, who shot to international stardom in the 1960s, has died aged 80, her son has announced.
Hardy became a pop icon in the 1960s with Mick Jagger describing her as his ideal woman. Bob Dylan also wrote a poem for her and her androgynous style was imitated around the world.
"Mom is gone," her son Thomas Dutronc wrote on Instagram on Tuesday with a picture of himself as a baby with his mother.
The singer was born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944 to a single mother, who was separated from the father of her two daughters.
Her grandmother told her she was "hideous" and that she would never find a match and it was only years later when Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger declared that he had a crush on her that she realised she was not the "young, naive unattractive girl" she had been led to believe.
A portrait of the French singer taken in March 1970 in Paris during the recording of the ORTF TV show ‘Au risque de vous plaire’ directed by Jean-Christophe Averty (Disques Vogue/AFP via Getty Imag)
Hardy’s first single in 1962 sold a million copies, making her an instant star of the "Ye-Ye" (after the Beatles "yeah, yeah, yeah") generation of post-war French pop singers.
Hardy, who was studying German at university when she shot to fame, did not find performing easy at first and appeared ill at ease on stage.
"Singing is not something that comes easily to me," Hardy, who thought of herself as a melody-maker first and foremost, told the French-German Arte channel in a documentary.
But soon a parallel career as a cover girl beckoned, and the singer's thick fringe and bohemian style were seen everywhere.
She was an early adopter of the mini-skirt and became a model for fashion designers including Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne.
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.
Hardy poses at her home in Calvi on August 12, 1977 (AFP via Getty Images)
Bob Dylan was among those bowled over by the singer's languid vocals.
On the cover of his "Another Side" album in 1964, he wrote a poem starting: "For Françoise Hardy/At the Seine's edge/A giant shadow/Of Notre-Dame".
Hardy married fellow "Ye-Ye" star, Jacques Dutronc, who wrote her hit "Le Temps de l'Amour" in 1962.
The song was revived for a new generation in 2012 when director Wes Anderson used it in his film Moonrise Kingdom.
The couple had one son Thomas, who also became a musician, before they separated in the late 1980s.
In 2004, she was diagnosed with lymphoma, and in 2019 revealed she had throat cancer and had received 45 rounds of radiotherapy.
In a radio interview in 2021, Hardy, who had lost hearing in one ear, backed a bill on euthanasia. "At a certain point, when there is far too much pain and no hope, you have to end the suffering," she said.
Hardy was the only French artist to appear in a 2023 ranking of the 200 greatest singers of all time published by Rolling Stone magazine.
At the time, the publication said her cover of Leonard Cohen’s "Suzanne" might be "the most evocative ever recorded, his included".
In addition to her native French, Hardy also sang in English, Italian and German. Her career spanned more than 50 years and almost 30 studio albums.
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