#tuca — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Self-Titled Summer | Françoise Hardy (1971, France)

Our next Self-Titled Summer spotlight is on number 119 on The List, submitted by arratoon. Here’s a quick rundown:

Point of origin(s): Françoise Hardy (b. 1944) began writing her own songs and playing guitar as a teenager and, in 1961, after a few auditions and both singing and music theory lessons, she was signed to Disques Vogue. After her song “Tous les garçons et les filles” from her first EP (1962) became a hit, Hardy quickly became a popular – if not the – star in France’s new yé-yé phenomenon (the term itself, if I understand correctly, originating from a transliteration of Hardy’s English “yeah! yeah!” lyric in her song “La fille avec toi”, which she had performed on TV). Her debut LP album (s/t but also known by the title of that first hit) was released in 1962 (i.e., when Hardy was only 18), and it sold 2.5 million copies within a few months. Hardy quickly became an international star as well, and released an album in Italian (1963), two in German (’65, ’70), and three albums in English (’66, ’68, ’69) in between her first few French albums. The album we look at here is Hardy’s 11th studio album, left untitled like most of the previous ones (it can also be found under the title La question, after its most popular track). Though Hardy had already begun to move away from the whole yé-yé sound and image, this s/t departs further from her previous work, primarily due to its more sparse and mature sound and difference in how it was developed. Most of the music was composed by a Brazilian musician named Valeniza Zagni da Silva aka Tuca, and then rehearsed with Hardy for a full month before the recording process began. The two women connected deeply both artistically and personally, each at the time dealing with issues in their love life (Hardy’s issues specifically stemming from her relationship with future husband Jacques Dutronc). The pair would essentially use the recording sessions for this album to deal with their emotional situations, collaborating with each other to create something beautiful and honest out of their pain.
Tasting notes: Not (post-?)yé-yé, French pop mixed with Brazilian saudade/bossa nova, 33 minutes of having your socks charmed off, emotional acoustic guitar therapy, a beautifully supportive relationship between two women
Standout track: “Viens”, “Chanson d’O”, “Le martien”, “Si mi caballero”
RIP: Hardy would go on to continue an incredible career as a singer-songwriter, which would include 17 more studio albums (the final being the 2018 Personne d’autre), a couple of which went in some unexpected directions such as the fantastic alt rock Le danger (1996) (my personal favourite). She was also a writer (fiction and non-fiction, including an autobiography in 2008) and an astrologer. Hardy left us just over a year ago, at the age of 80. Tuca would co-make another bossa nova album also in 1971 (Dez Anos Depois by Brazilian Nara Leão) and then one solo album in 1974 (Drácula I Love You), but would sadly die much too young in 1978.
Websites: Wikipedia

Happy listening!

#1970s #bossaNova #BrazilianMusic #FrançoiseHardy #FrenchPop #music #musicDiscovery #selftitled #Tuca