New album from Françoise Hardy, Personne d’Autre.
A few decades ago now, I remember Alan Price (of The Animals and House of the Rising Sun fame for those who don't know) playing the Theatre Royal in my home town of St Helens, UK. He had been delayed on his way, leaving the show having to be put back a couple of hours. The crowd were getting tetchy. There were no support acts. It was the opportunity for scenes that only happen in films. There was a young woman who worked at the theatre who was a talented singer-songwriter. She was shy and nervous but theatres are the places that nurture your dreams and feed hopes of being discovered one day. If ever that day was going to come, then this was surely it. Or one of them. How many chances does a young, shy hopeful get? Have the nerve to take? With encouragement from those who had heard her backstage and knew her abilities, she plucked up the courage to take to the stage to entertain the great public on her own. It took a lot of nerve on her part, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, strumming away as she sang softly. She had a quiet manner and was painfully aware of her mistakes which the crowd, bored and impatient, were quick to point out. She braved it out for a short while, but rapidly lost what precious little confidence she had started with. Rather than offer encouragement, the audience found great amusement in loud laughter and jeering, offering advice that was unhelpful, in between comments that were uncomplimentary. This just served to unnerve her all the more, with the result that, as she became ever more self-conscious, the slightest mistakes she would make developed into much bigger ones, until in the end a crescendo of derisory noises from the audience sent her fleeing the stage in tears. And then we sat there in silence for the hour or so until Alan Price finally turned up.
My mother worked at the Theatre Royal, so our family knew the people who worked there, from the manager Slim Ingram to the usherettes. The people we spoke to all said the same thing: the girl was hugely talented but painfully shy and totally lacking in confidence. They did all that they could to encourage her backstage, no doubt nurturing some dream she had of her own. They thought that this could have been her great break, living out in real life the old Hollywood story of the shy stand-in who takes the audience by storm and, with the confidence to match the ability, goes on to have a long and successful career. That's what they thought could happen. That's no doubt what attracts folk to work in the theatre. It attracts dreamers and romantics. You soon lose your fantasies when you have to actually entertain the real public, though. The girl was eaten alive by a demanding and unforgiving audience who had paid good money to see a top star.
The point of my preamble/ramble is that it's a tough old world for introverts, those for whom the basic things of normal communication require an immense effort on their part to even attempt, let alone accomplish. It takes remarkable courage for them to attempt something beyond the ordinary, as is required in the world of musical entertainment. Showbusiness and pop music is the cemetery of human hopes, dreams, and visions nurtured in many a lonely room. I have no idea what became of the girl at the theatre. I have no idea how talented she was. She was a girl with long hair, shy manner, and soft voice who accompanied herself on acoustic guitar. Not loud, not dynamic, apologetic in the few words she spoke. It sounds familiar. I'm glad that Françoise Hardy is one of the quiet ones who not only made it, but survived, triumphed, and is still with us today, basking in widespread recognition of her being an artist of the highest order. I wonder how many of this type fail to make it. It's an age for extroverts, an age in which ambition triumphs over ability time and again. Not many introverts make it. So I have a particular affinity with those that do. It pleases me to see Françoise held in such high regard. I don't care that her looks may well have been a great help in this respect, opening doors for her that may well have been closed shut to other introverts in this most superficial of worlds. She got lucky that way. Fine. Others don't. Not fine. The superficial world is not as the world ought to be. But the introverts could tell you that; should you ever stop talking long enough to listen to them. "Why leave me hanging on a star?" Nick Drake asked in one of his final songs before his death, "When you deem me so high?" Nick, along with many others, was lost on the way. Françoise made it. And that makes me glad. She's a champion for introverts!
Listening to the new album by Françoise Hardy, Personne d'Autre, I am struck by the quality of the songs, and cannot help but ruminate on how the material seems to complete a career that began in 1962. I should review the new album, song by song, but as I listen, certain thoughts, asides, and digressions suggest themselves. Feel free to join me as I engage in some free-form rambling through the back pages of my most favourite female artist.
At 74, Françoise Hardy occupies a distinctive place in pop culture, both as an enduring style icon, for those who care for such things (I have no idea and even less interest) and as a singer whose songs have, over a period of six decades, lent themselves to renewed appreciation by successive generations of fans, critics, and fellow artists.
I enjoyed reading this excellent article on Françoise Hardy in The Guardian at the weekend. I am astonished to find that she has a new album out, given the seriousness of her recent health problems. With every release in the last couple of decades, I have thought that this would be the last time we would hear Françoise Hardy. But I really did think that L’Amour Fou from 2012 was going to be the very last album we would have from her. It is a wonderful record, and would have constituted a fitting end to her career. But here she is, in 2018, with Personne d’Autre, an album which, by my reckoning, is her twenty ninth studio album of original material. I need to count again, old dyscalculiac as I am. What I do know is that I have the lot, and many more besides. I have a very nice collection of LPs and EPs on vinyl, too. I like her songs, I like the way she sings them. There's not a lot of loudness and shouting going on in her music. I must have written a million words with her voice in my ears over the years; it's very soft and undemanding, doesn't intrude, doesn't disturb, and has these soft textures that support my ideas as they drift by. I find her very consistent. They say only mediocrity is consistent. But she has this enduring quality that you can find across her work as a whole. She is now what she was all those years ago. She has not so much updated her style of ethereal melancholy as adapted new trends to her own way of doing things, enriching her unique approach along the way. For something so seemingly simple, her music has proven to have remarkable depth and substance. She remains herself throughout without getting repetitive and boring. It's just my view, and is of no great importance, but I do find her to be an artist of real substance. That may not seem much of a claim, until one sets it into the context of her trademark simple songs sung with this wistful whispery voice. That doesn't seem much to build a career on, but decades on from her first hit in 1962 she is still very much with us, and as something much more than a memory or nostalgia act. If I could take only the one record to a desert island with me (and I always fancied Montaigne’s tower, personally, something modest like that), then it would be Françoise’s La Question (1971). Although as I write that, I have to point out that as soon as I heard La Question on the radio, the very first thing of hers I ever heard, I had to go straight out the next day and buy the first thing I could find by her. The record contained Le Premier Bonheur du Jour, Mon Amie La Rose, Ce Petit Coeur. I was gripped by a compulsion to go and find everything else she ever did. In other words, I'd be off the desert island in no time exploring the music stores all over the world. Even if I would have to swim, armed only with my Learners' Certificate from 1976.
Personne d'autre is the latest release by Françoise Hardy and, for all we know, it may well be her last. She has said as much before, and yet, somehow, has always managed to come back one more time, with one more album, continuing to add to her reputation rather than diminish it. She's done it again here. If the end has come at last, then Personne d'Autre is a magnificent fulfilment of every promise contained in her music. It is a superb collection of new songs superbly crafted and sung in her own sweet-sad evocative style. It is unmistakably her style, accompanied as she is by light orchestration and unintrusive arrangements which envelop her soft vocal delivery. The voice is huskier, but she can still hit the high notes. Of the twelve beautiful songs here, eight of them are co-written by Françoise, all sung in French except You're my Home. Whenever I hear Françoise sing in English, I cannot but think of the lost collaboration with Nick Drake at the time of the If You Listen album in 1971. Françoise sings English with an enchantingly French flavour. It could never be Nick Drake, of course, for that reason. Nick's Nick and Françoise is Françoise, and each has their own unique qualities. Still, when she sang songs in English by relative unknowns Perry Blake and Ben Christophers in 2004 and 2006, I couldn't help but cast my mind back to what we could have had with respect to Françoise recording songs by Nick Drake. The same again with You're My Home. I always wonder if it plays on her mind, and whether she sees these young up and maybe coming English singer-songwriters as potentially new Nick Drake's. Maybe subconsciously. There could only ever be the one Nick Drake, though. And his day was done far too soon and a long time ago, now. (I intend to write more on this at a later date, time and inspiration allowing).
In the article, Françoise declares that she always sings from the heart. That explains a lot of the attraction I have for her songs. My favourite singers are heart singers. They may be technically accomplished and boast an impressive vocal range. Or not. That's not the most important thing for me. I know many technically brilliant singers who can juggle octaves for fun. They bore me rigid. I don't want to be impressed by a singer, I want to be moved. The best singers move you. They may have technically brilliant voices, but not necessarily. Take Ray Charles, or even Sinatra as he grew older. Brel. I'll not name the many singers with octave spanning rangers who use ten notes where one will do. I try not to put down the favourite singers of others. But I don't care for them and I'm not remotely impressed by what they can do. They don't move me, they bore me and I suffer them through gritted teeth as I search for ear plugs or the off button.
Françoise Hardy doesn't have much of a voice, but she does a lot with it. She constantly makes reference to her limits as a vocalist. She recites the first lines of Serge Gainsbourg's La Javanaise: '“J’avoue j’en ai bavé, pas vous…” she intones softly, “Avant d’avoir eu vent de vous…” She offers these seductive lines as the perfect example of the “sonority” of a song lyric, the elusive element that she values above almost all other things in her music. “For me, everything begins with the melody. Without the melody, there can be no words, but I also need this sonority, this poetic sound that the words make when they combine with the melody. This has always been my obsession. I know that I am very limited vocally, but I also know why I am still here – it is purely because I am so selective when finding the melodies.”
That's quite a revealing statement. In Patrick Humphries' biography of Nick Drake, Drake's arranger Robert Kirby says that both he and Nick were 'mad' about Françoise. He says that 'Nick hadn't got a voice,' and that 'Françoise Hardy also hadn't got a voice.' But they used the voices they had perfectly. That's what made him and Nick think that Françoise could sing Nick's songs. The appeal, he says, is the French tradition of declaiming a song. The French come from a tradition in which the words come before the music and the melody isn't so important.
'The French also came from a culture where they declaim the words, rather than have to have much of a melody. It's the lyrics that carry the song. French chanson culture has always been totally different to German, English, American, Italian in that it's the words that matter. They don't write strong melodies.'
That may be true of the chanson tradition, but it is patently untrue of Françoise Hardy's approach to song. Kirby argues that 'it is the concept, the atmosphere of the whole' that matters, and this 'is not based on a catchy tune … ' He speculates that this 'attracted Nick as well, because in fact his vocal melodies aren't that strong: if somebody asked you to sing a Nick Drake song, it's very hard to do. I think that made him think perhaps Françoise Hardy could do his stuff well: to deliver, to declaim atmospherically a lyric.' The mistake here is to have read Françoise Hardy as someone who was part of the chanson tradition. She may well have sung in softly spoken tones, but she took her musical root from strong melodies. She says this time and again in interview. At a loss to explain why she has had such success over such a long time, Françoise says the only thing she knows is that a beautiful song makes her feel as if she's coming out of herself to touch the divine. "It's only that I cannot resist the temptation of a beautiful melody," she says. "It's one of the things which make me really happy, and if a musician offers me a beautiful melody I cannot resist."
Françoise's strength has always been her lyrics. Songwriters and musicians send her their best melodies for her to invest with meaning. Personne d'Autre showcases her lyrical talent with melodies from famous songwriters like Michel Berger, Yael Naim and La Grande Sophie. For Françoise it's all about the melody. This may well explain why she was hesitant when it came to recording Nick Drake songs herself. We do know that, for all of the plans for Françoise to record songs written for her by Nick Drake, which led to an actual recording session at Sound Techniques studio in London, where Nick recorded, she never did record any Nick songs. What Kirby writes on the chanson tradition may well be true, but the inferences he drew were false. When offered the chance to record Nick Drake material, Françoise baulked, pointing to her vocal limitations. The recordings never happened. We can speculate on the reasons for that. In the Humphries book, Françoise says this:
“I loved all the songs – the early ones as much as the later – but it never occurred to me to record any of them because my vocal and rhythmic limits, as well as my whole personality, make me prefer to sing more simple songs, a bit more 'subtle' than Nick's.”
The article I am reading here elaborates on this. Here, she makes it clear that she goes to the melody first. And, as Robert Kirby states above, Nick Drake's songs were never strong on melody.
It's an interesting revelation for those who take an interest in Françoise's style. And it sheds light on why the proposed collaboration between Françoise Hardy and Nick Drake never happened.
She says the same things elsewhere too. "I can’t resist a beautiful melody and the most beautiful melodies are also sad,” she says. “Let’s reference adagios from great concertos for piano and violin. I’ve always thought that a grand melodic theme comes from elsewhere, from a partly divine inspiration. Beauty, in all its form, is the expression of the divine.” It's the beautiful melodies that tempted her back to record one more album. And, if she is right in what she says above, we are entitled to attribute this comeback to divine inspiration.
I love melody, and I love sad melody. Find my favourite songs, and you will see that they are strong on melody. 'Hardy’s music is defined by soaring melodies and heart-wrenching tales of love, loss and life as an introvert,' the article cited below states. Asked whether she considers melody to be the most important element of a song, Hardy is strongly affirmative: “It’s the priorité des priorités (priority of priorities). I would only write with a good melody - it is that, along with the emotion it expresses - that dictate the text,” she argues.
That's good to hear, because I find a good melody irresistible, too. I like a good melody. My favourite songs all seem to possess strong melodies. It is the core of my philosophical work, too, as shall become clear when I publish my work on Dante's Sweet Symphony of Paradise.
So what is melody? The word 'melody' derives from the Greek μελῳδία, melōidía, meaning "singing, chanting" (μελῳδία. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project), also tune, voice, or line, and refers to a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as forming one single single entity.
The idea is the central core of Dante's vision, running through his sacred poem. As he writes in the Comedy:
Hereby the Living Justice sweetens so our love in us, that it can nevermore be turned aside to any kind of wrong. Voices that differ make on earth sweet music; so in this life of ours its different grades produce sweet harmony among these spheres.
That's the musical model that establishes unity in and through diversity, conforming our acts to true ends. In its most literal musical meaning, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color. In the dictionary definition, melody refers to a sequence of single notes that is musically satisfying; a tune. It is that aspect of musical composition which is concerned with the arrangement of single discrete notes to form a satisfying sequence.
The dictionary definition gives as an example: "her great gift was for melody." It could have been referring specifically to Françoise Hardy. Melody is the principal part in harmonized music. And that gives a very strong reason as to why the songs of Françoise Hardy struck an immediate, deep, and enduring chord with me. Her songs, her style, her approach fits the musical model at the heart of my philosophy.
"The true goal of music—its proper enterprise—is melody. All the parts of harmony have as their ultimate purpose only beautiful melody. Therefore, the question of which is the more significant, melody or harmony, is futile. Beyond doubt, the means is subordinate to the end."
— Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1771)
Forte, Allen (1979). Tonal Harmony in Concept & Practice, p. 203.
The interpenetration of means and ends, the world in union.
Françoise Hardy remains something of an enigma, not least because she is a singer who doubts her vocal abilities and seems uncomprehending of her qualities and their impact on others. “It has always been a big surprise to me that people, even very good musicians, were moved by my voice,” she says. “I know its limitations, I always have. But I have chosen carefully. What a person sings is an expression of what they are. Luckily for me, the most beautiful songs are not happy songs. The songs we remember are the sad, romantic songs.”
The 'beautiful songs,' the songs 'we remember,' are the 'sad, romantic songs.' That pretty much sums up the appeal of Françoise Hardy. The first time I heard her voice was on La Question. I had no idea who she was, but I knew she was singing my song. Of course, I had heard many sad singers of rainy-day sorrow, but this singer I was hearing on the radio – Françoise as it turned out – had it down to perfection. “I think … sentimentality and romanticism characterizes me most,” Françoise says in the interview with Hayley Scott. She says the same thing in other interviews: "During my whole life, I've always written about the same subject because songs, for me, are love songs, sentimental songs," Hardy explains. That's fine by me, 'sentimental me,' to take the title of a song on the very first album I ever owned (Elvis' Separate Ways), an inveterate, incurable romantic. Hers was the voice for my ears. Françoise is a singer of grace, elegance, gentle charm, cool melancholy, and warmth: that's quite an alluring combination for those with a taste for rainy-day sadness and sweet sentimentality. It's not everyone's taste, but it's mine. I just find it noteworthy how high Françoise's standing is with the coolest of the cool artists in the pop world, from the sixties with Dylan, Stones and Beatles, through to the likes of Bowie and Iggy Pop and onwards to Damon Albarn and Blur and other contemporary stars. I don't get the impression that Françoise has ever worried too much about being cool. When asked for her influences, she tells the truth and still declares her admiration for Cliff Richard, a man considered about as uncool as it is possible to be, one who, at his best, was regarded as a pale and lame imitation of Elvis. That's most unfair, and I find Françoise's name dropping of him quite endearing. Because Cliff is far from cool, whilst Françoise is the epitome of cool. The cool artists love her, they loathe Cliff, and she loves what she loves and says so. I like that about her. I don't particularly like Cliff myself, but he is much maligned, and unfairly so. I do like Billy Fury, though, another of Françoise's favourites. He is certainly much cooler.
Which leaves me hoping that there will be at least one more release in the future from her - and one after that, and one ... Long may she continue. I remember back in 2004 savouring Tant de Belles Choses as very likely being the last ever recording by Françoise. It's a very fine recording and would have been a very fitting end to her career. It wasn't the last of her, though. 2006 saw the release of Parenthèses, an album of duets, some with established artists, some with new. She was still with it, hip with the new. So we lived in hope of more to come. 2010 saw the release of La Pluie sans Parapluie and, just two years later, L'Amour Fou. This was remarkably productive for Françoise given her intermittent recording since the mid-eighties. Both albums contain songs of the highest quality, not just among the best of her career, confirming her high critical reputation, but actually adding to it and rounding her music out as something mature and complete. Suffering from serious health problems, which saw her in a coma in hospital, the end really had seemed to have come.
It really did seem that 2012's L'Amour Fou would be the last that we would ever hear from Françoise. She has gone away before, of course, many times and for long periods too. She had always come back eventually. But this time we thought she had gone away for good. There seemed to be no coming back. Time catches us all one day, and Françoise's day seemed to have come.
But out of the blue, six years on, has come Personne d'Autre. Here she is still, then, very much still with us and, as the sad, sonorous, elegiac songs on Personne d’Autre testify, in very fine form indeed. We should appreciate what we have here. There is nothing ragged, shambolic or weak about the material on the album, and there is no embarrassing attempt on the part of an older artist to 'get with it.' Françoise Hardy has perfected the art of inveigling contemporary music to 'get with' her way of singing, absorbing it within her trademark style rather than being absorbed by it. The quality control remains high. Whether she can come back yet again at this high standard in the future is in the hands of fate. We are now used to living in hope. I have a feeling that, for all of her status as reluctant star, something compels her to sing again, if she is able. If she can, she will be back. At the same time it is plain that she has selected material here that addresses the end, the end of life, the day the music dies.
Personne d’Autre perfectly complements the substantial body of work that Françoise has put together since the millennium: Clair-Obscur (2000), Tant de Belles Choses (2004), Parenthèses (2006), La Pluie sans Parapluie (2010) and L’Amour Fou (2012). I hesitate to say completes that work, ever hopeful and greedy as I am for more. But I do get the sense of completion, something that fulfills the vision contained in her music from the first. The talent and the perfectly measured touch and tone were there from the start. All that was needed was time, enriching the innocence with experience. That's where Personne d'Autre brings completion. Le Danger from 1996 is also excellent but, with its hard rocking vibe, isn't quite of a piece with these albums.
In passing, I am very pleased to read Billy Fury getting a mention too as one of Françoise's favourite singers and a key influence on her youthful self in the Guardian article. He's my favourite Liverpool singer. Now then, remind what Françoise had say about The Beatles:
“Actually, I began my career before the Beatles, so they didn’t influence me at the start.”
I think she got tired in interview of being asked less about her own music and more about that of those who were around at the same time she was. She points out now that she came before them all. And she is still going long after most of them have gone. I'll go further and say that her recent albums are infinitely superior to anything that McCartney, Dylan, The Stones and the very few others who are left from the sixties. Again, just my view, but I get irritated by music journalists recycling the mythologies of the past to the neglect of the music that continues to be made. I think Françoise Hardy has, with her recent albums, produced music that enhances her musical legacy from the sixties and seventies. But she doesn't seem to mind those old ex-skifflers from Liverpool too much: “But I like their songs, because they are timeless.”
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, they ain't bad those guys. That said, the French Yé-Yé name came not from The Beatles and She Loves You, as sixties fixated music journalists think, but from Elvis and his All Shook Up. I digress. Elvis is my favourite singer, and Françoise is very much an Elvis fan. She should be, she was offered her first contract after singing a version in French of Elvis' I Gotta Know. Her biggest hit in Britain was All Over the World, from her original Dans le Monde Entier. She has revealed that the song is based on Elvis' Where Do You Come From? from the film Girls, Girls, Girls. I can't picture Françoise as being a huge fan of the Elvis sun'n'fun'cars'n'boats'n'planes'n'girls'n'girls'n'girls films. But I don't know. I just find all of this very intriguing. We read a lot about how Elvis revolutionized pop music with his rock'n'roll of the fifites. You name them, all the Beatles, Keith Richards and Bill Wyman from the Stones, Dylan, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Springsteen, Jim Morrison and The Doors, Elton John, Roger McGuinn and The Byrds, The Band, even Hendrix, even Clapton, and many more, they will tell you one and all how they were inspired to pick up a guitar and get into music through hearing Elvis in the fifties. It's a boys world, and it led to some great music, music I love. Freddie Mercury was another big Elvis fan when he was young (come to think of it, Freddie's Crazy Little Thing from 1979 is very much an Elvis pastiche). I just smile when I think of how Elvis influenced and inspired Françoise Hardy. Johnny Hallyday I can see. But Françoise seems so soft and introspective. It's a kind of quiet revolution. I have no idea what she thought of Hound Dog, Mystery Train, Milkcow Blues or A Big Hunk O'Love. I can't quite see Françoise as the hard rocking rockabilly rebel. But, then, I have never quite seen Elvis as this either. I like his ballads, always did. Françoise did too. We know that Elvis attracted a huge female following, and some of these too went on to develop careers in music. People don't know that Janis Joplin was a huge Elvis fan – 'Elvis is my man!' - Cher is another. More in Françoise's vein are Buffy St Marie and Joan Baez; both loved Elvis in their youth. But it was always the early, lively, vigorous Elvis they loved. Buffy loved the Elvis of 1956. She loved My Baby Left Me in particular, a great rocking blues.
Françoise covered many of the songs of the rock idols of the fifties. Elvis (Loving You), Marty Wilde (Bad Boy/Pas Gentille), Ricky Nelson (Lonesome Town/ La Rue Des Coeurs Perdus), Buddy Holly (That'll Be the Day), The Everly Brothers (Let it be Me). It is decidedly the softer end of the rock'n'roll spectrum, one which Françoise softens out even further. I'll put it this way, it makes Connie Francis sound like Wanda Jackson. But that's the way it is in the world of Françoise, quiet and understated with a tendency to the lush and saccharine when things get out of hand. It's kind of revolutionary in its own mild-mannered way. We know that American and English rock'n'roll was the staple musical diet of Françoise's youth, along with her French favourites. In interview she has named Elvis, Paul Anka, Cliff Richard, The Everly Brothers, Billy Fury and such like as her particular favourites. "I listened to a British radio station called Radio Luxembourg. Radio Luxembourg, your station of the stars," she says, laughing, "And so I heard for the first time Elvis Presley, Cliff Richards, The Shadows, Brenda Lee, young artists like that. Neil Sedaka. And I had no interest for anything else than this kind of music." Cliff Richard and Neil Sedaka! They are not cool names to drop in rock circles. Françoise tells it like it was and is. She obviously liked the softer end of the rock'n'roll revolution. But she absorbed and adapted it to her own personality. I picture her in her room, ear glued to the radio, listening to this kind of material. She was finally offered a recording contract after singing a French language version of Elvis' I Gotta Know. The rock revolution of the fifties fired an explosion of activity all over the world as kids took up the guitar or the piano in an attempt to emulate their idols. We know the big names with the big voices and loud drums and guitars and keyboards (everyone from Beatles to Hendrix to Doors to Zombies etc, the names I give above and many more). I'd just point out here that the quiet and introspective folk of the world were in on the revolution, too, articulating it in their typically reserved style.
As many, both the boys and the girls of Françoise's age, drifted away from Elvis as he turned explicitly soft and pop after his return from the army in 1960, Françoise stuck with him. She obviously liked his more romantic, critics would say sedate, side. 'Elvis died when he went into the army,' said John Lennon. He didn't, but the Elvis of the fifties rock rebellion was certainly no more. And the generation he inspired took pop music on further. I just find it touching for some reason that Françoise Hardy was inspired by this ultra-cool melancholic ballad Where Do You Come From? from one of those early sixties films, the Elvis that the shakers and movers of the pop world were abandoning in droves. Françoise stuck with Elvis as he opted for the ballads, and she built a career on that style. I like that. It's a quiet revolution. She tells her story. Listen to that song by Elvis, or As Long As I Have You, Can't Help Falling in Love, Am I Ready? and you will hear that very same tune running through Françoise's trademark simple balladry. I hear the strong influence of The Everley Brothers, too, for that matter. Ricky Nelson. That's the wing of rock'n'roll she is on. She openly cites Where Do You Come From? as the inspiration for Dans le Monde Entier which, as All Over the World, became a top twenty smash in Britain in 1965. That sound of the trademark Elvis ballad, however, is all over Françoise's melancholy ballads, take Saurai-Je? as just one clear example of many.
Françoise tells you herself here:
It's the quiet revolution lead by introverts. The story of how she got into music bears this out. Françoise recalls her mother pressuring her absent father to buy her a gift as a reward for excelling at the baccalaureate. “I was younger than any pupil in my year and yet I somehow achieved the highest marks.” “I will never know why I chose a guitar because a transistor radio was all I ever wanted.”
“Plus, I knew absolutely nothing about how to play the guitar, so I was astonished to find that I could make so much from just three chords.” She began writing songs obsessively in her bedroom, sometimes knocking out three or four in a week. “Really, those three chords produced most of my songs for the next 10 years.”
But I digress. Again. I like to digress. Catch the ideas as they suggest themselves, before hiding again.
I have lost count of the times I have encountered people who recall Françoise Hardy from the sixties and express admiration for her songs from that decade, only to wonder whatever happened to her. They express surprise when I tell them that she went on from that decade to record the best music of her career and, what is more, is still recording music of the highest quality to this day. They are incredulous, and me even more so that they didn't know. Isn't it common knowledge? I should remember that Britain doesn't really know much about French music. They may know names like Piaf and Aznavour, but couldn't name more than a couple of songs. Françoise had three hits in Britain, which is quite a lot for a French pop singer here. French pop, until very recently, was considered a joke. We know Gainsbourg, if only because people think his songs somewhat smutty. Frankly, they know the one Gainsbourg song, and it's still an event when it is heard on the radio. Whatever happened to Sylvie Vartan? France Gall? Sheila? In fact, who the heck are they? So I shouldn't be surprised. I had never heard of Veronique Sanson until this month. She is very good, I have to say. So I shouldn't be surprised that the British lost track of Françoise somewhere when we lost the sixties to the warm rosy glow of collective memory. She's forever young in that world where the sixties never dies.
I am forever concerned to challenge and overturn that view that keeps her confined to the past. It totally devalues her substantial achievement.
Beautiful melodies combined with sadness and heartache have been the consistent thread running throughout the music of Françoise Hardy. Over the years she has developed, expanded, and enriched that music. Françoise Hardy is, of course, an iconic figure, and people remember her sixties image as much as her songs. As a cultural icon, Françoise Hardy evokes the spirit of a particular place and time, so much so that many find it difficult to envisage her as having gone on to have an existence outside the world of 60s black and white films with their quaint, Parisian backdrops. She remains quintessentially French in that sense, mediated by distance and imagination. Against that, I continue to maintain that not only did she gain her independence of that suffocating imagery, she actually got better and better as an artist as the years went by. That is certainly the case with respect to the music of the early to mid-seventies. She moved into middle of the road terrain in the late seventies, but still recorded fine material. I am less keen on the eighties material, considering some of the arrangements to be inappropriate, others to be dated. There are still good tracks there, too, tracks like Mazurka. Le Danger was a superb comeback in 1996, the hard rocking sound shocking her out of the middle aged torpor of the eighties. But it is from 2000's Clair Obscur that Françoise secured her reputation as an artist of the highest calibre. In contrast to the albums she has made since 2000, her songs from the early to mid-sixties, which made her name and had a huge cultural impact, can sound breezier, poppier, more dated and ephemeral. Her later work is far more refined than her earlier. That's something of a sweeping generalization, of course, and there are plenty of the sixties tracks which count as refined, tasteful and elegant. I'm just saying that some of the poppier stylings of some of them, far all that they define the sixties as a swinging time, do not hold up against the substantial songs of her post-2000 material. Tracks like, for instance, Les Temps des Souvenir or Non, Ce N'est Pas un Reve, define a time and a place, mind, and I'm not diminishing them. I'm just saying that songs like La Folie Ordinaire from 2004 are infinitely superior. I'm saying she was good in the sixties, but that she got better in the seventies and continued to improve with age.
Françoise herself seems to be of a similar view, although she humbly expresses this with deprecatory remarks about her early work: “From very early on I felt very frustrated because I wanted to have beautiful electric guitars like those of the Shadows in the sixties … Instead, I had very bad French musicians and a terribly bad musical production. My albums began to improve when I went to London to record them. My first songs were not very interesting either.”
I'd like to take her through each album in turn. I think she may be referring specifically here to the very first album or the first two or three. By 1965 she really was developing rapidly and showing evidence of great songcraft and sophistication.
As far as many in the UK are concerned, Françoise Hardy was part of the swinging sixties generation and disappeared some time around the breakup of The Beatles. That's not true, not in origins and certainly not in the end. Note again what Françoise says about The Beatles, and consider why she feels the need to say it: “Actually, I began my career before the Beatles, so they didn’t influence me at the start.” That's true. She was before Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc. And she does seem a little put out in interviews when classed with these artists, as if her importance as an artist is dependent upon her association with those others. She makes it clear she met them a few times and didn't know them beyond those transitory events. She has a pretty cool and detached view of the artists with whom she is frequently mentioned, as if some secondary talent. She came before them all.
The Fab Four Want to Hold Her Hand, Hardy Could Care Less
On Revenge of the Flowers, Françoise collaborated with Malcolm McLaren of Sex Pistols fame (or infamy, depending on what you think). He was open in declaring his admiration of her, saying this: “The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and many other groups were all desperately interested in having Françoise Hardy become their girlfriend in some way.” Read into that what you like. You can add Bob Dylan to the list, who wrote a poem to her on the back of 1964's Another Side of Bob Dylan. It began: “for françoise hardy / at the seine’s edge / a giant shadow / of notre dame / seeks t’ grab my foot.” The article asks us to imagine ourselves in her shoes, with all these sixties stars, and many more besides, competing for a date with her. But rather than capitalizing on a position thousands of those screaming Beatlemania girls in A Hard Day’s Night may have committed murder for, her response was 'beautifully removed.' She not only let the fuss pass on by, she added a few distinctly cool comments as she went on her own way. “He looked very thin and sickly,” she says of Dylan, “which may explain why the concert was so bad.”
She never considered herself a sex symbol. I get totally hacked off by how often reference to Françoise starts from her looks, lingers long there and often stays there. I heard her before I ever saw her. I was so bowled over by her voice that I sat up and put my ear close to the radio to make sure I caught her name. When it was announced it was a new one to me. I had no idea who she was or where or when she was. I make a point of this, because I am sick to the back teeth of the way her looks always enter the equation when evaluating her music. Sam Cooke came up with the notion of a screen test to determine whether anyone was a good singer. Put the singer behind a screen and listen to them first and judge them by what you hear. I first heard Françoise Hardy over the blind test of radio, I heard the voice before I saw the image or knew the name. She passed the test with flying colours.
Hayley Scott writes this: 'Hardy is often referred to as a 60’s sex symbol – and still, articles focus a lot on her looks – which has the potential to undermine her extraordinary talent as a songwriter.' Right! And it hacks me off. I never ever make reference to Françoise Hardy's looks. I consider them a complete irrelevance. Likewise my views one way or another on what she looks like. I refuse point blank to be drawn on the question of what she looks like. Any words one way or the other just feed on themselves. And they are utterly irrelevant. What do you think of Beethoven's looks? Of course, pop music is so superficial and ephemeral that ambitious, talent-free boys and girls can luck out on their looks and image for as long as both last, which by the nature of such things is not long at all. Remind me, when was Françoise's first hit record again? 1962. And the year is now what? And she's just topped the charts again? Yes. I think this fixation on looks invites comment that serves to detract from her achievement as a singer-songwriter, which I do consider to be extraordinary. And I am very well aware that she must have been one of the most photographed people there has ever been, so she if she is judged on looks, then she is implicated in some way. In defence, I'd say she became very conscious of this and withdraw from such activity in the late sixties, abandoning the world of films at the same time.
But there it is, all very tedious for those of us who love the music and really don't give a damn for anything else. Often people mean well. When I first discovered her and asked people I came into contact with whether and what they knew of her, I remember one person smiling saying 'pretty girl.' You may as well call Elvis a 'pretty boy.' Which begs the question as to why, since youth is fleeting, such boys and girls don't disappear in time. She's very much still here. Do you think she might have some talent after all? Hayley Scott asks whether any of this bothers her: “I personally don’t think I have ever been a 'sex symbol'. It is probably one of the reasons why I got much more letters from girls or women than from men. Usually – but not always of course – the men who write to me are gay. I think that is because sentimentality and romanticism characterises me most.”
I'll add that I have never written to her. I just write about her. I've written about almost everything else that doesn't involve counting, too.
I don't know if the incorrigible Serge Gainsbourg ever saw her as a sex symbol. She recorded four songs of his (from memory). Gainsbourg got nowhere. I quote:
'Hardy … makes her talent seem effortless, though her longevity hasn’t come by chance. Rather than courting fame, she’s spent the last half-century collaborating sparingly and shunning lucrative indulgences like touring and the services of Serge Gainsbourg, whose dream of a full-length behind their 1968 collaboration “Comment te dire adieu” she declined to fulfill. What she won instead was license to write her own history.'
That's the important point to establish here: Françoise Hardy fought and earned for herself the ability to be the author of her own history. That's quite some achievement. Elvis never got that, and he was the biggest star on the planet. And if you care to revisit her sixties material, you will hear songs that sound as vital today as they did then. The simple ballads still sound fresh, yes, but I am thinking of rhythmic material like Qui Peut Dire and power ballads like Voila. As much else dates from that time, tracks such as these are beginning to stand out for the enduring qualities they possess. In other words, the superb albums that Françoise Hardy has come to record at the end of her career invite us to return and reassess the songs that made her famous in the first decade. Do that, and you will see her to have been a much more substantial artist than she ever appeared at the time.
I like The Beatles. I am very much in agreement with the analysis contained in the book Revolution in the Head. The Beatles didn't rest on their achievements but improved, added, innovated from album to album. A great band that I love. At the age of two I sat in the Yellow Submarine in Liverpool. I don't remember anything about it, but that kind of experience has to stay with you for life. In Merseyside, you appreciate The Beatles. I loved the revival that came in the 1990s with Anthology. The Beatles are great. But I listen to Françoise (and Elvis) much more. I won't say how much more, it may make me sound obsessive. I am far from denigrating The Beatles. I just tire of having to keep having to say how great they were and how much better than everyone else they were and how they did everything before everyone else and how they'll never be topped. Françoise came before them and still making great music long after they have gone. And I enjoy her songs very much, so much that I listen to them a lot more than I do The Beatles. I'll admit to being biased, so my view may not count for an awful lot. But I think I can make the case for her as an artist of real weight, depth, and substance. She is deceptively simple. And there is no shame in simplicity, either. I would also say that the fact that her simple style and limited vocal ability have proven to be so enduring should be taken as an indication of a depth and substance in her music that may not be immediately apparent.
And now she is back. Again.
“She is a survivor in more ways than one, having come through a long battle with lymphoma that, four years ago, saw her taken to hospital in a coma after a fall. Her life hung in the balance for several weeks until, with her son’s permission, the doctors tried a new kind of chemotherapy. Last year, in a television interview, she spoke of her almost miraculous recovery with mixed feelings: “I regretted waking up because I almost had the death I was dreaming about. So the question I asked myself when I woke up was: ‘Why this reprieve?’”
There may be a reason. There may not. 'Why' may not be a meaningful question. But that won't stop human beings asking it in any case. Sceptics say that human beings, in their self-importance, flatter themselves that life and events have some design or purpose that is of particular significance to them. The truth is that, to nature, we are of no importance at all. We are just accidents of nature, shaved chimpanzees clinging to a barren rock that came from nowhere and is going nowhere. We live, we die, and the grass won't pay no mind one way or the other. Doesn't that make you feel good? We can really build a vibrant, happy civilisation on that philosophy! Not! Why am I here? Who am I? I am drawing on my memory of the Catechism from Catholic school. How does Part 1 go now?
1.Q. Who made you?
A. God made me (Gn 1:26, 27; 2:7; Ec 12:1; Acts 17:24-29).
2.Q. What else did God make?
A. God made all things (Gn 1, esp. verses 1, 31; Acts 14:15; Rm 11:36; Col 1:16).
3.Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For his own glory (Ps 19:1; Jer 9:23, 24; Rv 4:11).
4.Q. How can you glorify God?
A. By loving him and doing what he commands (Ec 12:13; Mk 12:29-31; Jn 15:8-10; 1 Cor 10:31).
5.Q. Why ought you to glorify God?
A. Because he made me and takes care of me (Rm 11:36; Rv 4:11; cf. Dan 4:37).
6.Q. Are there more gods than one?
A. There is only one God (Deut 6:4; Jer 10:10; Mk 12:29; Acts 17:22-31).
7.Q. In how many persons does this one God exist?
A. In three persons (Mt 3:16, 17; Jn 5:23; 10:30; 14:9, 10; 15:26; 16:13-15; 1 Jn 5:20; Rv 1:4, 5).
8.Q. Who are they?
A. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (Mt 28:19; 2 Cor 13:14; 1 Pet 1:2; Jude 20, 21).
9.Q. Who is God?
A. God is a Spirit, and does not have a body like men (Jn 4:24; 2 Cor 3:17; 1 Tim 1:17).
10.Q. Where is God?
A. God is everywhere (Ps 139:7-12; Jer 23:23,24; Acts 17:27,28).
There is no proof one way or the other to settle that issue and it is idle to argue it out. That human beings are meaning-seeking creatures who need and search for purpose is something that we can be sure of; and purpose is no less real for being mere human invention or projection. I think there is something more than that, the existence of 'something' that draws out the cosmic longing for meaning that is innate to the human soul. To say that we put the question 'why' to ourselves and answer it in our own special way is in keeping with the subjectivism of the times. That way solipsism lies. It seems to hold all the cards in the modern world. But it doesn't. It can be trumped by a leap of faith that is provoked from within. To ask that question of 'why?' of seemingly random and accidental events and circumstances in the normal process of birth, life, decay, and death is to invite speculation beyond proof and evidence that leads inexorably, insofar as it continues, to the contemplation and, for satisfaction of longing, recognition of the divine.
'Why this reprieve?' Françoise asks. To even consider her survival a reprieve, rather than merely an accident, is to set up a trail of thought that leads to the divine.
Just some thoughts as I pass by. It's my page and I do and say as I like here. I dialogue with myself via others of all bents and persuasions.
Françoise explains why she came back:
“For many – very reasonable – reasons, I wasn’t planning on making another album. Circumstances decided otherwise, starting with me falling in love with a song I heard completely by chance, ‘Sleep‘ by Poets of the Fall. I played it to Erick Benzi (the album’s producer, who has worked on many seminal albums over the past few decades) who enjoyed it, then to my surprise sent me several beautiful melodies of his own composition that inspired me to write some lyrics.”
She elaborates further on the new album, Personne d'Autre, seeing it as a continuation of a theme that runs through her previous albums: romantic, emotional, and tinged with melancholy. “I don’t think it differs to anything I’ve done previously. It seems to me it is in the continuity of previous ones. I wasn’t planning on making another album, but I was offered these beautiful melodies and I just had to do it.”
Remember what she said earlier: “Beauty, in all its form, is the expression of the divine.” Those beautiful melodies tempting her back are expressions of the divine. This is the answer to the 'why' question, if it is at all a meaningful question.
I've listened to Personne d'Autre a few times now. I'm impressed. I'm a good judge and a fair one. I haven't always been impressed by Françoise's albums. I think her eighties albums are patchy, and I could never take to Decalages. I don't think her English language albums show her at her best, either. There are always a few tracks of note, mind. But I do give a fair assessment of her albums. I expect the best of her, and am so keen to hear her add to the songs of hers I love that I am prone to disappointment when she falls short. Personne d'Autre is a fine record with a number of truly great tracks. The album bears back to back plays. Her best albums have the same quality. You can play them over and again and they don't overstay their welcome. Instead, you unearth more and more layers as you go. That's the feeling I have with this album. It's a remarkable achievement and should be recognized as such. Despite a life-threatening health scare which put her in hospital in a coma for weeks, Françoise has succeeded in recording an album that stands on a par with her best work and, actually, enriches it with its emotional depth and maturity.
I'll quote critics and comment as I go: 'Hardy’s new album is an unapologetically melancholic affair, that sonorous voice delivering songs that, in her characteristically impressionistic way, articulate love lost, regret and mortality.’ Much of the album sounds like a wistful goodbye.
Is it an album about growing older?
“Not intentionally, but, in a way, yes, since that is what is happening. I always write about the same subjects, but when you are 74 you become more reflective. Also, you cannot sing the same kind of lyrics as when you were 20 or 30. That would be somehow undignified. For some people, of course, it does not matter, but for me it does.”
Indefinable otherness, wistfulness, dreamy sadness, cool melancholy .. It's all still here, unimpaired, enriched by experience.
This passage states Françoise's qualities nicely:
‘Hardy’s gift for delicate phrasing is defiantly alluring. She conveys sympathy in every word, like a benevolent monarch surveying a faded empire, and sings in the plainspoken yet luminous way that she’s made iconic. It’s as if she’s saying, this is simply the way things are, and they’re quite beautiful enough.’
The album is intimate and gentle, combining vocal delicacy with lyrical toughness. The songs confront mortality head-on through an elegant pop sophistication, as evidenced by Un Seul Geste where, in her still wispy yet huskier voice, she sings "Because all markers panic and time is accelerating nowhere" amid lithe guitars and spindly, shimmering keyboards.
Françoise has lost something of the soft wistfulness of her youth, and if a fragility and vulnerability remains her voice is strong and resolute. 'Personne d'Autre finds Hardy in full command of her authority as a songwriter and, despite her voice's wear and tear, the full weight and charm of her signature as a singer. If this is indeed her final recording, it's one she can be proud of and one for fans to celebrate.’
I set out with the express purpose of reviewing Françoise Hardy's new album Personne d'Autre. I have had it playing in my ears as I wrote. With the very best of intentions, though, I got carried away. I've just realized that I have not actually written that much at all on the songs contained on this album.
I had better go back and do some severe editing and sharp cutting.
In the meantime, all I can say is:
Welcome back, Françoise! We were missing you before you were even gone. Twelve songs of that trademark beauty and cool, elegant melancholy, eight co-written, a couple of covers, and a song in English. The songs are reflective, literate, and characteristically elegant. I've said it before many times to those who tell me that they remember Françoise Hardy from the sixties and didn't know that she was still making records: Françoise Hardy got better and better with age. Her songs remain simple, her sound remains ethereal, but the body of work has layers, weight and substance. Her music is like the weightless stone of the great cathedrals, or the solid air that John Martyn sang about. This quality was always evident in her work, although it was all too easily overlooked as lightweight and ephemeral. Time has now added its dimension to the talent, tone, taste and touch that was always present in her music to complete a body of work of depthless, ethereal, and elegant poise.
Personne d'Autre is a wonderful album and Françoise Hardy is a wonderful artist.
My guide to the discography of Françoise Hardy, to be updated in light of Peronne d'Autre.