Françoise Hardy - A Rose for a Friend

A shy singer of generational anthems, an incredulous yet superb style icon, a heartbroken and heartbreaking narrator of doomed love affairs, a clumsy comedian: with a few film appearances and a career as an astrologer on top. Françoise Hardy, mademoiselle par excellence, the world's sweetheart, as well as a chanteuse of unique elegance.

Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born on January 17, 1944 (a Capricorn with Libra rising) in Paris. As a teenager, oppressed by her mother, she considered taking refuge in a convent; at seventeen, however, as a reward for good grades at school, she received a guitar from her father, with which she dreamed of emulating the radio idols of the day. Having reluctantly enrolled at the Sorbonne, she answered an ad in France-Soir looking for aspiring singers. She thus landed at the illustrious Vogue label, which immediately launched her on television and in jukeboxes, with French translations of American hits.

Within a few months came great success: a live television broadcast of a referendum was interrupted by musical interludes, during one of which "mademoiselle Hardy" sang "Tous les garçons et les filles". The impact on the French public was powerful, comparable to what David Bowie would later have on the British singing "Starman" on TV arm in arm with Mick Ronson: already the next day, the single was selling by the truckload.

Within a few hours, the tall, extremely thin girl dressed as a schoolgirl had won over France: people were already talking about a new idole of the country's venerable tradition of popular song. Yet the girl immediately distanced herself from the image being attributed to her, partly because of that very lyric: she did not want to be a generational icon. She took little pleasure in the company of her peers, preferring to shut herself in her room reading Queneau and Ionesco (who would later thank her for the publicity). She saw little of boys, yet dreamed of great love — something she would end up dealing with a great deal, as she became a pop singer. It would become her favourite theme: approached with enthusiasm, though never gladly, and lived through much torment. Of Virgil's famous line "Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori", she would bear out the second half ("let us yield to love") but, however strongly she wished to believe the first ("Love conquers all"), she would find herself, much against her will, proven wrong. Still, she would agree with Plato that it is good to suffer for what is beautiful.

The LP built around Françoise's catchy hit instantly becomes a pop classic: Tous le garçons et le filles. The cover is charmingly simple, with a pretty photo matching the clip used to promote the single on TV: our heroine and a bunch of other girls, bundled up in horrendous brown overcoats, wander around a funfair while mademoiselle mournfully intones her anthem. Very different in tone is "J'suis d'accord", another strong single for the market, on which Hardy launches into a bray worthy of Rita Pavone. The real touch of class is the aching ballad "Le temps de l'amour", with music written by Jacques Dutronc, the melancholy Parisian's future husband.

Four EPs are drawn from the album.

The following year sees the release of another album, a smash hit across half the world: Le premier bonheur du jour, led by its title track (soon re-recorded by Hardy herself in Italian as "Il saluto del mattino"), a genuine manifesto of Our Lady of Song's art, an exquisitely tender song in which Françoise makes the very best use of her voice, an achievement often repeated but perhaps matched only by "Des ronds dans l'eau".

1963 also marks the start of her (not especially prolific) film career: a career that gets off to a poor start. The immediate success of the alluring yé-yé girl is exploited to boost the drawing power of "Castle in Sweden", a flat comedy written by Françoise Sagan and directed by another armchair revolutionary, Roger Vadim.

They say that when actors are having fun, the audience doesn't necessarily share in it. Here, only Sagan and Vadim are having fun, rather pleased with their own wit; but if even Jean-Louis Trintignant looks lost, neither the cast (which also includes Monica Vitti, Curd Jürgens and Jean-Claude Brialy) nor the audience can hope to benefit much from the authors' inspiration. Hardy, making her debut, would later recall the set as a particularly unhappy one, due to the lack of cohesion and enthusiasm among her co-stars, as well as a lack of rapport with Vadim. Here the singer plays, with remarkable conviction nonetheless, Ophélie, a woman who has remained a child but is anything but innocent.

Right after comes Mon amie la rose, with its abundance of crowd-pleasers. The march-like "Je veux qu'il revienne" (effective if not exactly elegant, with the phoneme "on-on-on-on" underlining the refrain, an almost ingenious solution in its sheer silliness) is followed by a run of solid filler tracks (nicely opened by "Tu n'as qu'un mot a dire"), after which the real highlights arrive. "La nuit est sur la ville", an elegy for a swindle pulled by a scoundrel, climaxing in the triple cry "Pourquoi, pourquoi, pourquoi?"; "Dans le monde entier", a devastating elegy in our heroine's finest style (“Que m’importe alors de savoir plus ou moins / Si d’autres cette nuit s’aiment ou bien ont du chagrin / Si d’autres se déchirent ou se rejoignent enfin/ Rien n’a d’importance sinon que tu es loin / Et que cette nuit, de toi, je ne sais rien”). The record closes with "Mon amie la rose", a macabre poetic peak in Hardy's output (though actually written two years earlier by Cécile Caulier, a conservatory student looking for performers). One of the promotional clips is striking, with extreme close-ups of a positively witchy Françoise intercut with images of, fittingly, danses macabres.

This is the moment of consecration, in Italy even more than in France. Hardy is adopted as a reference point of the Italian pop scene, which hails her, somewhat parochially, mainly on the strength of her international success. She now appears on television shows (the most famous moment being a sketch with Giorgio Gaber and Caterina Caselli, who spontaneously form the band "I cani"), records promotional clips of her songs in Italian for Rai, meets Rita Pavone and Gianni Morandi, and has her songs covered by Little Tony. She now appears at the Cantagiro, driving a Spider whose power terrifies her.

Her career goes through a schizophrenic phase: while in France and in English-speaking countries she's a light but sophisticated pop singer, a new Juliette Greco, in Italy she's the object of a rather simpler-minded cult, the same kind enjoyed by the Italian singers mentioned above, albeit with the reverence owed to her as a world star and someone more "authoritative"; a cult fed by television appearances, magazine covers that also run articles on Padre Pio, UFOs and royal dynasties, and newspaper pieces about her haircut and how to dress like her on a budget. This leads her, in part, to scale things back: on one hand she leans into her role as an ingenue pop singer (though the "yé-yé girl" label doesn't quite fit), on the other she takes pleasure in her international standing as a tasteful pop icon.

Indeed, in film she's given the honour of two refined cameos: in Clive Donner's "What's New Pussycat?" she's the secretary who throws the satyr-like Peter O'Toole into confusion; in Godard's "Masculin féminin" she's a soldier's girlfriend. She's then called into the star-studded cast (Eva Marie Saint, Adolfo Celi, Toshiro Mifune, James Garner) of "Grand Prix", John Frankenheimer's sprawling tribute to the world of Formula 1, with whom Françoise becomes infatuated. Her involvement in this film is the cinematic experience she speaks of most fondly, thanks to the friendship she strikes up with her doubly fellow countryman and colleague, Yves Montand.

Having shed the guise of the quirky adolescent, she claims the status of a grown-up, and carnal, vedette - despite the shock of having been harassed at a club in Tunis. Months after declaring she would never wear anything by Paco Rabanne, irritated by its excessive luxury, she accepts a hefty fee to model the house's famously heavy dress made of gold discs, escorted by gendarmes. The golden-token hen is hatching a new persona, kept on the back burner because the old one is still comfortable and profitable - old or new, the outfits pay off, and so she's photographed non-stop in fashion magazine spreads.

The run of hits continues with L'amitié, led by its caressing, aching title single, and La maison où j'ai grandi, which borrows its title from the French version of Celentano's "Il ragazzo della via Gluck" (the other Italian super-hit adapted on this album is "Se telefonando", transformed into "Je changerai d'avis"). Even the 33s of songs not drawn from albums dominate the market: towering above them all is the disarming sweetness of the march "Des bottes rouges de Russie" (“J’arriverai par le vapeur/ Tu me reconnaîtras, mon cœur/ J’aurai sous mon manteau de pluie/ Des bottes rouges de Russie”).

Hardy's popularity goes global: to fully capitalise on it, she's made to record singles in various languages; particularly successful are the many Italian-language versions of her songs ("Le premier bonheur du jour" becomes "Il saluto del mattino"; far less faithfully, "Comment te dire adieu" turns into "Il pretesto" - "Non voglio un pretesto per pietà/ Tu sai che detesto la slealtà") and in German, "Träume".

But the dominant language of the pop music market is English, and for that purpose dedicated LPs are produced: it starts with Françoise Hardy In English, followed by Françoise Hardy en anglais (with its famous cover) and If You Listen.

These LPs were collected in 2013 on the compilation Midnight Blues: Paris/London 1968-'72, which besides the brilliant title track includes excellent songs: "Song Of Winter", "Magic Horse", "Strange Shadows", "All Because Of You" (which she'll sing on the BBC, amid chilling bum notes caused by nerves), and again Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"; the standout is perhaps the enchantment of "Ocean", when a decidedly unsettling Françoise sighs that she's paradoxically soothed by the idea of vanishing, along with her own solitude, into the vastness of the sea (“Let the wind blow through my hair/ A speck of dust standing there/ Yes, I saw the ocean, said of it/ Nothing’s bigger than this/ Really need a, really need a friend/ Oh, let the sea my troubles mend”).

Her "pop singer" phase is almost drawing to a close, but in grand style. In 1967 comes another nod to youthfulness (one that doesn't fully convince Hardy, who remains attached to her image as a girl barely adapted to her own generation): Ma jeunesse fout le camp, with an obvious echo of her debut record. This time, though, there's far more elegance. The five tracks that follow the title track are rather monotone (though they open with the gentle "Viens là", so it's worth being patient), but right after them comes a landmark song. "Des ronds dans l'eau" (already sung by Annie Girardot in a Claude Lelouch film, "Vivre pour vivre"; Hardy would later also release the same song's English version from the soundtrack, "Now You Want To Be Loved"), an extremely delicate yet solemn ballad that, through the soft tone of her voice and an airy string accompaniment, lets the despair of an elegiac, doom-laden lyric rise to the surface - striking even to be sung (written by Pierre Barouh) by Françoise Hardy: “S’il y a tous ces témoins/ que tu veux dans ton dos/ dis-toi qu’ils pourraient bien/ devant tes ronds dans l’eau/ te prendre pour l’idiot/ l’idiot de ton village/ qui lui est resté là/ pour faire des ronds dans l’eau”).

What follows is a deeply mournful rendition of a poem by Louis Aragon, already set to music by Georges Brassens: "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux", which Hardy would also include on her next album (even though she didn't write it, it seems to be her motto). Almost at the close, the other highlight: "Voilà", the most genuinely energetic track on the record (setting aside a few rock-leaning attempts with aggressive arrangements that don't quite come off) and the most dynamic (thanks both to the most compelling intro in her whole repertoire, and to well-devised changes of pace and an irresistible refrain). The central invective makes it the fullest, simplest expression of the young Parisienne's feelings: “Je suis là, devant toi, toujours la même/ Oh! Pourquoi est-ce encore toi que j’aime/ Que j’aime, que j’aime, que j’aime/ Tu es là, devant moi, toujours le même/ Oh! Pourquoi ne puis-je pas te dire:/ Je t’aime, je t’aime, je t’aime”.

The following year brought Comment te dire adieu, another pivotal album in Françoise Hardy's career. It opens with what would go on to become a pop standard (covered among others by Jane Birkin, Amanda Lear, Jimmy Somerville, Belle and Sebastian): the title track, with its witty lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg built around rhymes in -ex (“sous aucun prétexte/ je ne veux/ avoir de réflexes/ malheureux/ il faut que tu m’ex-/ pliques un peu mieux/ comment te dire adieu/ mon coeur de silex/ vite prend feu/ ton coeur de pyrex/ résiste au feu/ je suis bien perplexe/ je ne veux/ me résoudre aux adieux”).

A solid piece of filler like "Où va la chance" is followed by another Gainsbourg song, this time a cover: the supremely elegant rendition of "L'anamour" (“aucun Bœing sur mon transit/ aucun bateau sur mon transat/ je cherche en vain la porte exacte/ je cherche en vain le mot exit/ je chante pour les transistors/ ce récit de l’étrange histoire/ de tes anamours transitoires/ de Belle au Bois Dormant qui dort”), with a sweeping piano intro and a delightful vocal performance. Then another excellent cover: a spellbinding French version of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" (also recorded in Italian, by Fabrizio De André). The rest of the album, starting with the reprise of "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux", offers no real thrills: but the opening run of four songs alone is enough to make this album an essential part of Françoise's discography.

The last album of the first phase of Hardy's career sold by the truckload: although released in 1970, Soleil is very much a sixties record. Aside from the guitar-heavy title track (and the odd idea of promoting the single by filming herself in wintry Milan), which Hardy would nonetheless keep close to her heart by including it in compilations and revisiting it as a duet, the standout moment is "Je fais des puzzles" (which in English became, who knows why, "Magic Horse": from “il avait des façons Londres/ de me promettre Corfou/ mais au soleil ou à l’ombre/ je le suivais n’importe où/ le soir, le soir, je fais des puzzles/ le soir, le soir, je me sens bien seule” to “In the crying wind I hear you calling me from way up high/ Magic horse fly to the sunshine, take me there before I die/ Higher, higher, higher in the sky, faster, faster, faster we must fly”).

The following year came La Question, the most complete album, the turning point in Hardy's discography, the start of the quietly delirious 1970s for Françoise Hardy: the only one of the French singer's LPs to remain better known than the songs taken from it, helped also by its iconic cover, a black-and-white photo taken by her friend Catherine Ruotolo.

Her first "serious" album, the start of a shift: from light pop songs to psychodramas – a shift that would find its finest moment right here. The atmosphere is, as that cover suggests, dark, raw and unsettled. Much of the achievement is down to Tuca (stage name of Valeniza Zagni da Silva), a Brazilian singer-songwriter who had fled her country as a political refugee (and as a gay woman), and who won over her French colleague with her guitar and melodies (Tuca's infatuation with the lovely Françoise did nothing to help a melancholy that would later drive her to follow a diet so drastic it proved fatal, in '78, at just 34 years of age).

The opening is anxiety-inducing: "Viens", a declaration of war (“comme une bombe exploser/ je n’ai jamais laissé passer/ une guerre sans y entrer” – the legendary on on on from "Je veux qu'il revienne!" resurfaces) aimed at a lover growing ever more distant, a song strung taut to the point of unbearable tension, in which tolling bass notes are followed by a brief, furious burst of strings; after a few deceptively calm guitar chords, the voice of a hitherto unknown mademoiselle Hardy arrives, in constant acceleration. Next comes the title track, with its mild rhythm but even tenser atmosphere and lyrics of desperate resignation (“de ta distance à la mienne/ on se perd bien trop souvent/ et chercher à te comprendre/ c’est courir après le vent/ je ne sais pas pourquoi je reste/ dans une mer où je me noie/ je ne sais pas pourquoi je reste/ dans un air qui m’étouffera/ tu es le sang de ma blessure/ tu es le feu de ma brûlure/ tu es ma question sans réponse/ mon cri muet et mon silence”). "Même sous la pluie" might suggest a return to more traditional ballads, were it not for its still-exasperated tone, a syncopated rendering of yet another desperate declaration of love.

Another surprise follows, bolder but less pleasant: "Chanson d'O", a sequence of moans over an instrumental backdrop with sound effects straight out of a sci-fi b-movie. The album then surges back with "Le Martien", a dazed fantasy evoking an extraterrestrial suitor who has travelled all the way down here to ask for the lovely chanteuse's hand. Then comes a genuine return to the tradition of French chanson, "Mer". Followed by one of the finest examples of Hardy-style melancholy: "Oui, Je Dis Adieu".

The release of La Question was followed by Et si je m'en vais avant toi, which, different as it is, is considered its younger sibling: it's a lighter record, meant to win back a broader audience (even though the previous one had sold rather well). This album draws less attention, it's more conventional, but still of great quality, moving between sweeping melancholy like "Le soir", a wistful tribute to Emil Cioran ("Cafard"), bursts of energy ("Où est-il, Prisons"), ironic but not entirely tongue-in-cheek claims about her own spirituality, later much celebrated ("Ma vie intérieure"), right up to a return to more girlish songs (the title track). Understated as it is, it's one of the finest moments in mademoiselle Hardy's discography.

Message personnel, although released just a year after Et si je m'en vais avant toi, is her most carefully constructed album, an attempt to return to the serious tone of La question and surpass its technical craft. A very good album, with points of interest far more compelling than its predecessor's, but less intense overall.

It opens ever so delicately with "Première rencontre"; followed by a rather lovely return to more joyful moods, "Rêver le nez en l'air". Then "L'amour en privé", by Gainsbourg, with a spirited and well-deserved exhortation ("L'amour c'est ce qu'on peut faire de mieux, alors pourquoi s'en priver?") followed by a heavy-handed refrain, with the usual sighs over agitated violins. Right after comes the masterstroke: "Berceuse", the quintessential lullaby, sung with magnificent feeling. The focus then wanes, with just a half-spoken duet with Georges Moustaki, "L'habitude", a call-and-response between an imaginary couple who've lost all their spark, inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (released the same year).

Then comes the title track. A message left on an answering machine: the first part is spoken as a phone call, the second sung. The style recalls the most excruciating songs of Domenico Modugno, "Piange il telefono" or "Il maestro di violino", but without their deranged verve. Sublime nonetheless: embarrassing and irresistible, unbearable and irresistible all at once.

In 1974, a partial step backwards: Entr'acte, with which Hardy's confessional streak reaches its peak. The birth of her son had brought her and Dutronc back together, but Françoise intended to scare her partner (even via the press) into staying close to her. So she assembled a team (including Dutronc himself, for "Fin d'apres-midi", the closing track) to set to music lyrics — aimed directly at the philanderer — that she had kept in a drawer for years.

This is how the Parisian singer's only concept album came together, and the only one in which she focuses on her own private life – already paraded through countless interviews. She imagines herself wandering at night in search of male company. It opens aggressively, a touch brashly, with "Ce soir", with a few ups and downs leading to the epically toned invocation "Je te cherche" (it almost brings to mind the Franco Battiato who, in the following decade, would play between the traditional love song and the mystic hymn with "E ti vengo a cercare"). Some editions close with "Que vas-tu faire?" (arranged by Jean-Michel Jarre), a Celentano-style plea about the ugliness of a world ruled by violence and hatred; she would later have the good sense not to cast herself as a prophetess of the obvious ever again.

The seventies might well have ended with Hardy still a leading name, even as a representative of an out-of-fashion world of pop songcraft. In 1977, in fact, she released Star on EMI, a very good album, worthy of closing out the run that began with La question (which nonetheless remains several notches above it).

Setting aside the tedious bore that is the title track, 7 minutes (the longest song of her career – one can only wish more of her songs ran that long) spent complaining about why the very audience that adores her for her songs isn't interested in her as a person (which is precisely why she takes it upon herself to inform the world), the songs are excellent and the atmosphere captivating, aided by the portrait on the cover.

“Chanson sur toi et nous” is the ideal love song, utterly simple and searing. After the diversion of “Enregistrement” (from Gainsbourg), there's another excellent variation on the classic chanson theme: “Flashbacks”. Then the same idea repeated twice over: the emphatic openings and anxious choruses of “Je ne suis que moi” and “Drôle de fête”. The record opens with a lament and closes with another: “Fatiguée”, but it's just a brief farewell that can't spoil the overall result of an album that, just below La question, Mon amie la rose and Ma jeunesse fout le camp, comes close to the podium of Françoise Hardy's finest records.

The record label, however, decides otherwise: Star performs decently in terms of sales, but it lacks both the historical importance of La Question and its impact on the market.

So Emi entrusts her to the care of Gabriel Yared and Michel Jonasz. Now demoted from singer-songwriter to mere singer, Hardy resigns herself to a run of albums that is as brief as it feels endless, almost comic in tone, steeped in a certain French humour (as cold as its English counterpart, but less composed and, above all, less effective). She herself soon states that she's more drawn to "beautiful slow songs with a string backing: I only love sad songs"; yet the declared model of her new handlers is Stevie Wonder, hardly a mope.

This new phase opens with one of the most striking images of her career: the video for “J'écoute de la musique saoule”, in which Hardy, her frame more slender than ever, dances (as much as her usual stiffness allows) against an oppressive blue backdrop. The problem, though, is the song itself: “J'écoute de la musique saoule” is a statement of intent that rings as hollow as it is ill-suited to Hardy the listener. If Hardy has never been an emotive performer, her discomfort with the new direction imposed by her label is overflowing: it's clear enough in other promotional clips, where the forced pursuit of dynamism only ends up highlighting the singer's near-total stillness.

What follows is a brief period defined by the simulation of a new identity, the very opposite of Hardy's true self: the coexistence of these two souls, combined with the thinness of the songs, will lead to a trio of albums marked by half-measures.

Next come Gin Tonic, which offers nothing more than a "Jazzy Retro Satanas" dripping with indecision, the usual variety-theatre humour ("Si c'est vraiment vraiment vrai" and "Sole comme une pomme"), as well as fresh hints of the maudlin streak that will resurface atrociously in the more "mature" sorrowful Hardy ("Que tu m'enterres") and in gloomy album covers.

Next, fittingly enough, comes À suivre, with more light-hearted quips ("Vouyou Voyou") and a few coarse touches of melancholy ("Villégiature"), set against increasingly frequent and listless TV appearances (the low point being a televised duet with her husband: both deliberately flat and off-beat, with the orchestra missing its cues on purpose amid giggles – what wit, what a gag, not even the Vienna New Year's concert manages that…).

À suivre is essentially the soundtrack to her long-awaited marriage to Dutronc, celebrated in Corsica in a civil ceremony, caught between the privacy of the occasion and the public display of the happy event (and photos of the groom slouched and grinning in front of the mayor).

And so the fulfilment of sweet Françoise's dream is celebrated by inflicting on the French summer the saccharine nursery rhyme "Tamalou" (that is, "T'as mal où?", a pun that not even, years later, Chrissie Hynde's "The Isle Of View" would manage).

The French public, happy to have the private affairs of the newly minted Madame Hardy inflicted upon them, sends this nursery rhyme straight to the top of the charts (in perfect sync with Gianni Morandi, who at that very moment was plunging, with "Sei forte papà!" and "La befana trullallà", into a slump comparable to that of his French colleague).

Even as she sells records like never before, not even in the days of the Cantagiro, Hardy reaches a breaking point. She misses the pathos, however harrowing, of her earlier albums; adding to the regret is the failure of her cheerful turn, which didn't even entertain her. Hardy-as-comedian simply doesn't work, least of all when reined in.

The tension of albums like La Question came paired with an inspiration and a quality that are now long gone. The return to seriousness will indeed bring this Grande Dame of French chanson back to the register that suits her best, but songs on the level of "La Nuit est sur la Ville", "Viens", "Chansons Sur Toi Et Nous", "Message Personnel" will never come again.

This breaking point leads her to shed her own image, in two ways: drastically cutting her famously long hair, and once again disowning her nature as a shy girl.

She releases Quelqu'un qui s'en va, another title that reads as a statement of intent. Abandoned relationships, if not outright departures: memories of figures from a past now in ruins. It's 1982, Françoise Hardy is 38, and she already carries herself like an older woman looking back on a troubled life.

The attempt is well executed, and there's even a fairly elaborate video for “Tirez pas sur l’ambulance”. Still, she can't resist the comic episodes, always without even trying to be funny: hence we're served up “Un deux trois chat”.

The break is necessary. Françoise Hardy is a woman of many interests and many talents: why waste time in the studio making mediocre albums? She decides to spend half the decade devoted to astrology. She writes manuals, becomes a constant presence on a radio programme, and gets into furious on-air rows on television (harsh words fly between her and a tarot reader, later exposed as a fraud on a national scale). Unsatisfied with her alternative occupation, after six years she gives songwriting another try.

In 1988 came out Décalages, whose only real achievement is laying bare the schizophrenia that her recorded output now seems incurably afflicted by. There's still parish-hall humour (“Sieste”; “Une misse s’imisce”), the complaints that have by now become typical of her persona, and questions that aren't exactly profound (“Je suis de trop ici”; “La vrai vie c’est où”). In the middle, a spectacularly well-aimed hit: “Partir quand même”, which with its melodramatic sway is hardly the most restrained track of her career.

“Partir quand même”'s chart entry isn't reason enough to go back to the record shops; not for another eight years, at least.

Danger, with its flaming cover and its easy, menacing title, materialised in 1996. Almost nobody noticed, perhaps because it's a dignified record, despite conjuring up a dark allure it doesn't actually possess. Luis Buñuel and Marguerite Duras are credited and thanked as inspirations.

Quietly, Madame Hardy gets the gears turning again: so much so that the next break lasts only four years. The “shortest” break turns out to be the most productive.

Clair obscur came out in 2000, boasting a cover of Django Reinhardt's “Tears” (“Tous mes souvenirs me tuent”), a duet with Iggy Pop (“I’ll Be Seeing You”), a contribution from Eric Clapton (“Contre vent et marées”), and a duet with her husband, from which her former boyfriend Jean-Marie Périer made a video (“Puisque vous partez en voyage”).

The names make more of an impression than the record itself, which is nonetheless a step forward. The new millennium finds Françoise Hardy set on a path of albums that aren't landmark works, but are at least dignified; and having a past made up not only of the five embarrassing albums released between 1978 and 1988, but also of two decades, the 60s and 70s, spent setting the rules of the pop scene, she can afford it.

Another three-year silence is broken in 2003 by the release of a compilation: Messages personnels, not quite a greatest hits, given that of the twenty tracks, the near-title track is one of the few that was ever actually released as a single. Madame Hardy defends her track selection with a rather tart note in the booklet – of which the best part is the cover image, a blue-tinted photo of the beautiful chanteuse's bewitched and bewitching expression.

The following year brought an album of new material: Tant de belles choses, more than justified by the extremely elegant title track, despite an intrusive electric guitar part (a risk, given our singer's vocal shyness). The song was adapted in 2014 by Franco Battiato for Alice, who responded well to her French colleague's style.

In 2006 came the Hardy & Friends operation: Parenthèses, a parade of duets with a dispiriting outcome.

A faint start, alongside Alain Bashung, on a bona fide classic such as Charles Trenet's “Que-reste-t-il de nos amours?”. Standing out for the wrong reasons are the cloying shouts of Ben Christophers on his “My Beautiful Demon”, the karaoke turns alongside a particularly turgid-toned Julio Iglesias (“Partir quand même…”) and Alain Souchon (“Soleil”), and the phlegmy stammering of Alain Delon (“Modern Style”).

Only mildly curious is the one track Hardy sings solo, “La Valse des regrets”, based on a waltz by Johannes Brahms (already sung by Georges Guétary), with her friend Hélène Grimaud on piano.

Four years go by, and it only takes a merely ordinary album to make up for the previous disaster: La pluie sans parapluie, written and recorded over more than a year, with a team of collaborators involving many minor names from 2000s French song, and Mark Plati, from the ducal court of David Bowie (Plati was supposed to produce the album, but having written the arrangements for seven songs in two days, he was fired on charges of negligence; his bass part was kept on Champ d’honneur, making the title unintentionally ironic).

The record sells better than usual, thanks to the fan base of the minor stars involved: but genuine feeling remains, as ever, in short supply.

In 2013 came L’amour fou, an album as heavily promoted as it was devoid of spark or surprise. Her voice had become a querulous lament, while elegant but static black-and-white footage from the recording studio accompanied the songs.

The record is a companion piece to Madame's reinvention as a novelist: under the same (utterly banal) title, released in Italian translation shortly after the original version was published, she put out her first work of fiction, doubling down on her autobiographical bent. A monologue that pushes Hardy's confessional streak to the extreme (if before she merely complained, now she's also bitter): it amounts to a tedious, ill-judged, scathing tirade against her husband and his lovers, naming no names but sparing no insults.

The end of her career, predicted so many times before, now seems imminent at last. Françoise Hardy is an ever more passive star, a victim of herself, locked in self-indulgent contemplation of her own dramas.

With records she had long since stopped saying anything, films gave her little, as an astrologer she applied herself but never made it a full vocation, and her books are bad. In interviews she talks only of exhaustion, of the unshakeable sadness her husband gave her, and of physical troubles (including a benign tumor). A letter of hers to the newspapers causes a stir and no small irritation, in which she calls the Hollande government's super-tax on the super-rich intolerable and violent.

Katie Melua gives her a gift: with a sweet cover of “All Over The World”, she gives Paris Match the idea of interviewing the two singers together, complete with a photo in which Madame, ever more frail, finally smiles.

In an age of dismaying media vulgarity, it's heartening to see certain vedettes of bygone days make a comeback – even if it amounts to little. In days of twerking and assorted miseries, Audrey Hepburn is being rediscovered: found again online, reproduced on handbags and accessories, but at least it's a reminder that a certain style once existed. The same goes for other stars revived purely for image's sake – but at least they're lovely images: Grace Kelly, or Romy Schneider.

The same fate befalls a French singer who was all the rage in the Sixties, when television offered up pop songs rather than reality shows. The internet, the very tool that fuels the spread of Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, teems with images of the long-legged girl who made David Bowie dream and left Bob Dylan regretting that he couldn't get a word out when he found himself face to face with her – he found the words too late, and consoled himself by scrawling them on the back of “Another Side”.

Melancholy and resigned, Françoise Hardy is now the subject of a thriving revival. The scene in which the two young leads of “Moonrise Kingdom” dance to “Les temps de l’amour” (after the lovely Suzy has introduced Sam to Hardy's debut album as her favorite) has become a cult moment; her fellow countryman François Ozon structured a film, “Giovane e bella”, around four of her songs; Alice launched the album “Weekend” with “Tante belle cose”, an Italian adaptation of “Tant de belles choses” made by Franco Battiato.

Mon amie la rose si lamenta, ma non appassisce.

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