Dan Sullivan Benjamin Hardy Popular Books

Dan Sullivan Benjamin Hardy Biography & Facts

Françoise Madeleine Hardy (French: [fʁɑ̃swaz madlɛn aʁdi]; 17 January 1944 – 11 June 2024) was a French singer-songwriter and actress. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy rose to prominence in the early 1960s as a leading figure of the yé-yé wave, and became a cultural icon in France and internationally. In addition to her native French, she also sang in English, Italian, and German. Her musical career spanned more than 50 years, with over 30 studio albums released. Born and raised in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, Hardy made her musical debut in 1962 on French label Disques Vogue and found immediate success through the song "Tous les garçons et les filles". Drifting away from her early rock and roll influences, she began to record in London in 1964, which allowed her to broaden her sound with albums such as Mon amie la rose, L'amitié, La maison où j'ai grandi and Ma jeunesse fout le camp.... In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she released Comment te dire adieu, La question and Message personnel. In this period, she worked with songwriters such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara. Between 1977 and 1988, she worked with producer Gabriel Yared on the albums Star, Musique saoûle, Gin Tonic and À suivre. Her 1988 record Décalages was publicized as her final album, although she returned eight years later with Le danger, which reinvented her sound as harsher alternative rock. Her following albums of the 2000s—Clair-obscur, Tant de belles choses and (Parenthèses...)—saw a return to her mellow style. In the 2010s, Hardy released her last three albums: La pluie sans parapluie, L'amour fou, and Personne d'autre. In addition to music, Hardy landed roles as a supporting actress in the films Château en Suède, Une balle au cœur and the American production Grand Prix. She became a muse for fashion designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, and Paco Rabanne, and collaborated with photographer Jean-Marie Périer. Hardy developed a career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject from the 1970s onwards. She was also a writer of fiction and non-fiction books from the 2000s. Her autobiography Le désespoir des singes... et autres bagatelles was a best-seller in France. As a public figure, Hardy was known for her shyness, disenchantment with celebrity life and self-deprecatory attitude, which were attributed to her lifelong struggles with anxiety and insecurity. She married French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc in 1981. Their son, Thomas, is also a musician. In 2021, Hardy announced that her health had worsened and that she would not be able to sing again owing to the effects of cancer therapy. She died of cancer in Paris in 2024. Hardy remains one of the best-selling singers in French history, and continues to be regarded as an important and influential figure in both French pop music and fashion. In 2006, she was awarded the Grande médaille de la chanson française, an honorary award given by the Académie française, in recognition of her career in music. Early life Françoise Madeleine Hardy was born on 17 January 1944 at the Marie-Louise Clinic in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, in German-occupied France during World War II. At the time of her birth, there was an air raid alert in place, with the windows of the clinic "exploding". She related being born during this violent context with the "abnormally anxious temperament" that she developed as an adult. Her mother Madeleine Hardy, who came from an ordinary background, raised Françoise and her younger sister Michèle—born eighteen months after her—as a single parent. Her father Étienne Dillard—a married man who came from a much wealthier family—did little to help them financially and was largely an absent figure in their upbringing, only visiting the children a couple of times a year. Madeleine Hardy raised her daughters strictly, in a modest apartment on the 9th arrondissement's Rue d'Aumale. Hardy had an unhappy and troubled childhood, and mainly engaged in solitary activities like reading, playing with dolls or listening to the radio. At the insistence of their father, the girls went to a Catholic school called Institution La Bruyère, under the tutelage of Trinitarian nuns. The gap of social origin between Hardy and her classmates was a source of permanent humiliation for her. She recalled in her autobiography: "This is most likely where the feeling of shame that has tormented me nonstop since I was a child took root. Everything fell into place: the social status of my parents who I naively believed were divorced, (...) the good sisters' constant complaints that my father was generally a year behind in his payments, and the various differences with the other girls." Her lifelong insecurities were also fueled by her regular visits to her maternal grandmother in Aulnay-sous-Bois, who "told [her] repeatedly that [she] was unattractive and a very bad person". Between 1952 and 1960, Hardy and her sister were sent every summer to Austria to learn German, encouraged by her mother's new lover, an Austrian baron. As her father played piano, Hardy was encouraged to receive piano lessons as a very young child, from which she quickly dropped out after experiencing stage fright when she was supposed to display her talents onstage at the Salle Gaveau. A disciplined student, Hardy skipped two years of secondary education and passed her baccalauréat in 1960 at age sixteen. To mark the occasion, her father asked her what gift she would like and she chose a guitar, with which she began to sing her own melodies. Following her mother's orders, she enrolled in the Paris Institute of Political Studies while still a teenager. Considering it too challenging, she quickly left the institution and joined the Sorbonne to study German. Hardy used the time left from her courses to devote herself to composing songs on her guitar. She began to test her repertoire on the small stage of venue Moka Club, also known as Club des mordus, where she performed every Thursday "in front of an audience of retirees". Around this time, she auditioned for record label Pathé-Marconi after reading an ad in France-Soir. Although she was rejected, Hardy was impressed that she had held the directors' attention for longer than she expected. She also felt encouraged after hearing her recorded voice, which she found "less off-key and tremulous than [she] feared". The aspiring singer then went to Philips Records, where she was recommended to take singing lessons. Following this advice, Hardy joined Le Petit Conservatoire de la chanson in 1961, a school for radio performers—the first of its kind in France—led by singer Mireille Hartuch. Originally launched as a radio program in 1955, the Petit Conservatoire was turned into a popular TV show beginning in June 1960. When a student gave a satisfactory performance, they were given the chance to release it on the radio, or even perform it agai.... Discover the Dan Sullivan Benjamin Hardy popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dan Sullivan Benjamin Hardy books.