The Music of Francoise Hardy, "The ideal woman"

Joe Strummer first introduced me to Francoise Hardy through his personally curated BBC radio program London Calling. A French model and singer, Hardy was perhaps known as much for her looks as her voice. But that doesn't mean the music isn't great. There's an intoxicating charm and subtlty to her songs—especially those from the late 1960s—that create an atmosphere in turns soothing, playful and melancholic. Although Hardy's voice does not have the androgynous quality of Nico's, there's nevertheless a certain similarity: songs dominated by a singular personality, simple vocal melodies that never force the singer to rise or fall out of their comfort zone, and gorgeous professionally-executed background instrumentation that can be vibrantly lush or delicate and sparse.



Bob Dylan, although he had not yet met Hardy, wrote a poem to her in the liner notes to Another Side of Bob Dylan. The two would eventually meet in 1966 when Dylan played a concert in Paris. He invited her to accompany him to back to his hotel room at the George V after the show. "I had no interest in him as a man, only as an artist," she later told The Telegraph in 2005. "He took me to his hotel room after inviting me to a show in Paris, and played me two tracks he hadn't yet released, 'I Want You' and 'Just Like a Woman,' but he wasn't a very attractive man, and didn't seem well in himself." Apparently the Stones' Mick Jagger, who famously called Hardy "the ideal woman," was more her type. "Jagger was different. He is someone I could really have fallen for. Unfortunately, he was with Chrissie Shrimpton at the time." Personally, if Bob Dylan had sung "I Want You" to me in a Paris hotel room, I would have dropped trou right on the spot.

for françoise hardy

at the seine's edge

a giant shadow

of notre dame

seeks t' grab my foot

sorbonne students

whirl by on thin bicycles

swirlin' lifelike colors of leather spin

the breeze yawns food

far from the bellies

of erhard meetin' johnson

piles of lovers

fishing

kissing

lay themselves on their books. boats.

old men

clothed in curly mustaches

float on the benches

blankets of tourists

in bright red nylon shirts

with straw hats of ambassadors

Francoise Hardy - "L'anmour" (from Comment Te Dire Adieu)
Francoise Hardy - "Ca a Raté" (from The Yeh-Yeh Girl From Paris)