January 17 marks the 70th birthday of Françoise Hardy, the mother of all filles sourires. The next few weeks, we’re going to pay tribute to Françoise by guestpostings, special covers and whatnot.
This is a guestpost on their favourite FH-chanson by French band (and FS-fave) Pendentif:
“We like Françoise Hardy for the romanticism, this sweet melancholy about her person. There’s this very French edge to her, this icy beauty that you see in actrices such as Catherine Deneuve or Isabelle Huppert.
Her lyrics echo a sense of universal purity, the idea of going back to the origins, to what is most important after all: the birth of a great love, the origins of the world.
This song is really one of the best in its genre, with Serge Gainsbourg writing over the instrumental of the original track “It’s hurts to say goodbye”. Gainsbourg masters brilliantly the technique of rejection, by stressing the beat drop with the syllables “ex” and with added spoken words. The song was released early 1969, the erotic year or l’année érotique as the French say!”