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With bangs in the wind<\/strong>, a leggy silhouette, a guitar under her arm and an audience particularly enthralled by her heartfelt pop ballads inspired by her own experiences. We’re not talking about Taylor Swift here, but about Fran\u00e7oise Hardy, who at the age of 80 has joined the stars<\/strong>, the epilogue to a 30-year battle with pharyngeal cancer<\/strong>, which will be made public in 2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A rare singer-songwriter of the y\u00e9-y\u00e9 period<\/strong>, Fran\u00e7ois Hardy was a synthesis of female emancipation at the dawn of the great upheavals of 1968<\/strong>. A wonderful singer of soulful songs, she remains France’s sole representative in Rolling Stones magazine’s 2023 list of the 200 greatest singers of all time.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Raised with her sister by a single mother from a working-class background, the solitary, shy young girl<\/strong> did herself some violence, asking for her first guitar at 16 and making her first appearance at Mireille’s Petit conservatoire de la chanson.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She was only 18 when her first song was released<\/strong>… and what a song it was! “Tous les gar\u00e7ons et les filles”<\/strong> (1962) sold 2 million copies<\/strong>! Photos taken with her photographer boyfriend Jean-Marie P\u00e9rier soon made her a household name across the Channel. So much so that Mick Jagger and David Bowie<\/strong> flocked to meet her.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But if the leader of the Rolling Stones saw in her his “feminine ideal”<\/strong>, Bob Dylan<\/strong> his platonic love through poetry, and photographer pygmalion Jean-Marie P\u00e9rier<\/strong> his muse, it was as much for her talent and personality as for her resolutely avant-garde style<\/strong> for the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n While flare jeans<\/strong>, high boots and mini-skirts<\/strong> were no match for her, Fran\u00e7oise Hardy’s androgynous physique and discretion<\/strong> were her most distinctive traits. This was in stark contrast to the pulpy, exuberant Marilyn Monroe\u00a0 pin-ups<\/strong> Brigitte Bardot claimed to be.<\/p>\n When she appeared on the scene with her first hit, she wore a shapeless black sweater and… the bangs that were to become her signature before she opted for a boyish bob.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nA pioneering androgynous look<\/h2>\n