Sylvie Vartan
France’s cheerful early ‘60s yé-yé bubblegum pop music didn’t feature only young female singers (there was, for example, Claude François), but girls were certainly the majority, first on the radio show Salut les copains (Hello Friends!), named after a Gilbert Bécaud song, and the subsequent spin-off music magazine of the same name. Any song featured as the week’s favorite pick on the show was guaranteed to be a hit, just like titles from Oprah’s book club. Feral House has published a grand tribute to these glamorous singers, Ye-Ye Girls of ‘60s French Pop, by French music writer Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe, with the first of many accompanying playlists.
The best known yé-yé (derived from “yeah yeah,” coined three years or so before “She Loves You”) singers were Sylvie Vartan (long-time wife of French rocker Johnny Hallyday), France Gall, Sheila, Jacqueline Taïeb, and the stunning Françoise Hardy, whom Mick Jagger once called his “ideal woman.”
Sylvie Vartan with The Beatles
Chantal Goya
Gillian Hills
Françoise Hardy
France Gall
Serge Gainsbourg, then in his thirties, wrote the hit “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” for the schoolgirl singer France Gall, whom he called “the French Lolita.” He then wrote “Les Sucettes” (“Lollipops”) for her, a thinly veiled paean to oral sex, which greatly embarrassed her when she eventually learned the song’s true meaning. (Note the dancing penises in the video.)
Yé-yé, like the vast majority of Francophone music, didn’t receive a lot of attention in the U.S. when it was first released, although Susan Sontag did mention it in passing in “Notes on Camp” in 1964: “Sometimes whole art forms become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post rock-‘n’-roll, what the French call yé yé) has been annexed.” Fifty years later yé-yé has enjoyed a new wave of interest, thanks to Quentin Tarantino and Mad Men.
Feral House’s Yé-Yé Girls of ‘60s French Pop:
Jacqueline Taïeb, “7 heure du matin,” a song about wanting to bed Paul McCartney:
France Gall, “Laisse tomber les filles”:
Gillian Hills, the original version of “Zou bisou bisou,” produced by George Martin:
Sheila, “L’école est finie”:
François Hardy, “Tous les garçons et les filles”:
Sylvie Vartan, “La plus belle pour aller danser”: