French singer-songwriter, actress, and model Françoise Hardy has died of laryngeal cancer at the age of 80. Her son, Thomas DuTronc, revealed the news on social media, sharing a photo of Hardy holding him as a baby. Dutronc wrote simply, “Maman est parties” (“Mom is gone”).
Hardy was born during an air raid in Nazi-occupied Paris in the winter of 1944. She and her sister were raised by a single mom who made a living as an accountant’s assistant. At age 16, Hardy picked up guitar and soon began performing at clubs and auditioning for record labels. She signed with Disques Vogue when she was 17, and the label released her first EPs, which were then compiled into her iconic debut LP, Tout les garçons et les filled. The album included her hits ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’, ‘Le temps de l’amour’, and ‘J’suis daccord’, whose success established her as a key part of the yé-yé movement introduced to the country by Serge Gainsbourg.
In 1963, Hardy represented Monaco at the Eurovision Song Contest and took fifth place. The following year, she began recording in London, allowing her to expand her sound with albums such as Mon amie la rose, L’amitié, La maison où j’ai grandi, and Ma jeunesse fout le camp… She recorded her work in multiple languages, including English, German, and Italian. Throughout the early ’70s, Hardy collaborated with musicians including Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger, and Catherine Lara.
In addition to music, Hardy landed roles in films including Grand Prix and became a muse for fashion designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, and Paco Rabanne. She also developed a career as an astrologer and was a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. She published her autobiography, Le désespoir des singes… et autres bagatelles, in 2008, and her first novel, L’amour fou, in 2012.
Hardy had battled lymphatic and laryngeal cancer over the last two decades, having been diagnosed with the former condition in 2004. She continued releasing records well into the 2010s; her last album, Personne d’autre, came out in 2018. Speaking to Britain’s Observer at the time of its release, Hardy said: “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.”