she “is one of those few French icons who span the 20th century”, greets journalist Bertrand Dicale

French song icon Françoise Hardy has died at the age of 80, her son Thomas Dutronc announced Tuesday evening.

“She is one of those few French icons who span the 20th century”greeted journalist Bertrand Dicale on Tuesday on franceinfo, after the death of Françoise Hardy at the age of 80.

“Coco Chanel, Juliette Gréco, Françoise Hardy, are women who were both artists but also models for millions of women and thousands of artists”, underlines Bertrand Dicale. She is “the equivalent of David Bowie.”

For the franceinfo journalist, with François Hardy, “we are not in nostalgia for the yéyé years, we are not in nostalgia for the 1960s, we are in a current artist. Like David Bowie, like Bob Dylan, like the Rolling Stones, she embodies something which is eternal and which goes far beyond the collective experience of French yéyés”.

Bertrand Dicale greets again “an author, composer, performer”but also “a fashion icon” : “She did a lot for sartorial elegance, for style, for class.” The journalist discusses his “supreme Parisian and slightly bourgeois elegance”. Françoise Hardy has “this silhouette and this way of facing life with immense poetry, immense frankness”.

Bertrand Dicale discusses the texts of the songs “what inspired her marriage, her extremely painful union with Jacques Dutronc”. She has “during his whole life the feeling of not being loved enough, of loving much more than he loves”, explains the journalist. According to him, when we put “end to end” the texts, “it’s dramatic, tragic, but she says it with a nobility, an elegance, a charm, a poetry and a lightness which are not only pop works, but which are also a life lesson”.

“For decades to come, we will take her for one of those poets who help people to live”adds Bertrand Dicale.