Legendary French singer Francoise Hardy has died at the age of 80, her son said Tuesday.
Thomas DuTronc said in a simple Instagram post tonight: “Mom is gone.”
Hardy, known worldwide for her crystalline voice and melancholic lyrics, had been suffering from different types of cancer, including lymphoma and larynx, since 2004.
He broke through at just 18 with his first hit ‘Tous les Garçons et les Filles’ (‘All the Boys and Girls’) in 1962, and helped found the ye-ye movement, a pop-inspired cultural movement that embraced British and Americans. rock in the 60s.
Hardy was the only French artist to appear in the 2023 ranking of the best singers in history published by Rolling Stone magazine.
Legendary French singer Francoise Hardy (pictured) has died at the age of 80, her son said on Tuesday.
Since her diagnosis, her life has been marred by the disease and at one point she was placed in an induced coma.
Hardy, known worldwide for her crystalline voice and melancholic lyrics, had been suffering from different types of cancer, including lymphoma and larynx, since 2004.
As one of the leading cultural icons of the 1960s, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Salvador Dalí.
In addition to this, he worked with composers such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara.
He visited London regularly during the heyday of the 1960s and admitted that he felt much better in the UK than in France.
Hardy told the Daily Mail in 2011: “From the moment I went to England, I became more confident. In France, the image I had was of a shy girl, a poor girl, lonely and not very pretty.
‘When I went to England I had a different image. I felt like journalists were much more interested in my appearance than my songs.’
Beyond her composition, she was sought out as a model, and Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne personally made her costumes.
He worked with composers such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara.
Beyond writing songs, she was sought after as a model.
Hardy starred in the 1966 film Grand Prix alongside Antonio Sabato (pictured)
He also appeared on the big screen, starring in a series of films in quick succession, including Castle in Swedish (1963), A Bullet in the Heart (1965) and Grand Prix (1966).
Her last film was If We Had to Do It Again (1976), by Claude Lelouch, in which she played herself.
Castle in Sweden (1963). Then A Bullet in the Heart (1965) by Jean-Daniel Pollet and Grand Prix (1966) by John Frankenheimer. He appears briefly in What’s New, Pussycat? (Clíver Donner, 1965),
Paris Match magazine quoted her as saying last year that she wanted to “leave soon and quickly, without much suffering.”
She was a prominent advocate of assisted suicide near the end of her life.
Hardy grew up in post-war Paris as an anxious child with a complex family situation, she told the Daily Mail in 2011.
She revealed that her grandmother constantly undermined her appearance as she grew up.
As one of the leading cultural icons of the 1960s, he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Salvador Dalí.
Since her diagnosis, her life has been marred by the disease and at one point she was placed in an induced coma. His life was saved at that time by a new form of radiation.
She was a prominent advocate of assisted suicide near the end of her life and told the magazine that it was “inhumane” that France did not legalize the controversial procedure.
“It is not up to doctors to grant every request, but rather to shorten the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes unbearable.”
He joked at the time that while he would have loved to have chosen to end his own life, “given my small notoriety, no one will want to risk being removed even further from the medical order.”
In one of his last interviews before his death, he said the only thing he would miss was his son.
She told Le Parisien: ‘I think above all of the immense pain of leaving my son, of causing him pain.
But I would rather die than suffer prolonged and unbearable conditions. And I always have in the back of my mind the idea that there’s something next.’
Hardy grew up in post-war Paris as an anxious child with a complex family situation, she told the Daily Mail in 2011.
Hardy rubbing shoulders with Mick Jagger in 1967 (pictured)
Jane Birkin and Francoise Hardy in 1974 in a fashion shoot
The product of a torrid affair between a young woman and an already married man twenty years her senior, her parents raised her while they were separated: her mother worked long hours to put food on the table, while her father rarely visited her, although he insisted in which her mother pays for Françoise to attend convent school.
She revealed that her grandmother constantly undermined her appearance as she grew up.
‘She had told me throughout my childhood that I was ugly and that I was the worst creature in the world. “She worried me that I would never meet anyone and that I would become a nun,” she recalled at the time.
Tributes to the iconic singer have already begun to arrive.
French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said in a post to X: ‘How to say goodbye? The eternal Françoise Hardy, legend of French song, who entered, through her sensitivity and her melodies, into the heart of an entire country.
“I send my warmest thoughts to Thomas Dutronc, his son, his family and his loved ones.”
More to follow.
