Music Arcades: Franoise Hardy: Les Chansons D'Amour

Lucy's profile listed her favourite music as Pixies, Tom Waits, Bach, The Strokes, maybe one or two others — and Françoise Hardy. I told her I had albums by all of those in my collection — except The Strokes.

So this is my Hardy CD, bought from Fopp just a year before that exchange. Why? Probably something similar to that which attracted everyone from Bob Dylan to my fellow residents of South East London: the allure of something more sophisticated, more mysterious and just more French; and the hope that just a bit of it might reflect on, or even rub off on, us.

So can it cross the Channel, let alone the Atlantic. Here's a couple of "translations" of Le Temps de L'Amour, first into Italian, I think by Françoise herself.

Thumbs up, wouldn't you say?

Now try this, back to the original French, but updated to a more contemporary idiom, with extra bass and all that.

Nooooo.

But leaving aside all that lifestyle accessory stuff, some really wonderful songs, beautifully arranged.

The same goes for Carla Bruni, I reckon, whose first two albums I snapped up when they were available on eMusic, in the pre-Sarkozy days. And Clive James agrees with me. The Sarkozy thing was obviously a watershed — a bit like Elvis going into the army — and things can never be quite the same again, even though catastrophic bad taste in men (Donald Trump, Eric Clapton) had been her peccadillo for years before.