Françoise Hardy | Our exclusive playlist to celebrate the 81st anniversary of her birth

Today she would have been exactly 81 ! In 2024, French music lost one of its most emblematic voices. On Tuesday June 11, Françoise Hardy died at the age of 80. Her music was known throughout the world and inspired many artists. In 2023, the American magazine Rolling Stone made her the only French woman to appear in the list of the 200 best singers of all time. In addition to the numerous covers and adaptations to which her catalog has been subject, her songs have been frequently sampled by her compatriots, but also internationally. To pay tribute to her, What the France has therefore designed a playlist dedicated to these numerous borrowings.

We naturally start with Françoise’s first hit song, “All the boys and girls”, released in 1962, the year she turned 18, which sold more than two million copies. A title that she had written and composed herself, a rare occurrence at the time, and which would serve as the basis for the title “French shawty” by the New York hip hop group Doppelgangaz in 2014. Even more unusual, “Oh oh cheri”, another of her songs released in 1962, inspired not one, but three titles by the famous Australian group The Avalanches: “Summer crane”, “Etoh” and “Extra kings”, all featured on their album “Since I left you” in 2001. The timeless “Le temps de l’amour”, was given a second lease of life when it was revisited by Bon Entendeur in 2021, but it had already been skillfully recycled previously by American DJ Freddie Joachim in 2015 on “Binoculars” and also by Parisian rappers GLGV in 2017 on “Roi du monde”. The title track from her 1963 album, “Le premier bonheur du jour”, would be sampled by British artist Vanessa-Mae on “Jamais” in 2001. “Catch a falling star”, taken from her first English-language E.P. in 1964, was resurrected three times: on “Jelly fish” by the duo Mike & Rich (consisting of Mike Paradinas and Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin), on “The perfect heist” by Blue Stahli and finally, on “I’m the only one” by Twiztid and Shaggy 2 Dope.

It was by recycling another of her hits from 1967, “Voilà”, that the famous English singer Robbie Williams recorded one of his greatest triumphs with “You know me” in 2009. He was not the only one to seize it since the Canadians Dirty Beaches (“Lord knows best”) and the Irish T-woc (“As viagens de hermacia”) did the same, respectively in 2011 and 2015. Same recipe for another Englishman, Barry Adamson, who experienced success in 1996 with “Something wicked this way comes”, based on “Le temps des souvenirs”, a work released by Françoise Hardy in 1965. She was also able to sing at the perfection in German and it was by using the title song of her second album in this language, “Traüme” (1970), that the American duo Gnarls Barkley, composed of CeeLo Green and Danger Mouse, developed their own “Open book” in 2009. The French version of the same track, “Rêve” (1971), was also sampled by the Swedish artist Jay-Jay Johanson on “A letter to Lulu-Mae” in 1998. That same year, her collaboration with the “French touch” iconic duo, Air, on the song “Jeanne”, later gave birth to the title “Вирус” by the Russian rock and rap group named 25/17 in 2012.

Further proof of her timelessness, if any was needed, several French rappers also constructed solid songs by sampling titles such as “Ma jeunesse fout l’camp” (Guizmo “C’était écrit”, Seyté “Ma jeunesse” or Hugo TSR and Tragik “Coloc à terre”), “Tomorrow is yesterday” (Seth Gueko and Ades “Mélodie du ghetto”) or “The girl with you” (Féfé “Cause toujours”, plus Columbine, Foda C, Lujipeka and Yro “2K17”). More recently, it was her 1968 anthem, “Comment te dire adieu”, that was revisited in electro style by the DJ Quentin Mosimann in 2022.

With our playlist “Who sampled Françoise Hardy?”, we invite you to (re)discover a selection of her titles sampled by artists from around the world. After each original piece, you will find one or more titles made out of it

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Who Sampled Françoise Hardy

Discover a selection of Françoise Hardy creations that were sampled by artists worldwide.

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