Francoise Hardy dies aged 80 after a protracted battle with most cancers

Legendary French singer Francoise Hardy has died at the age of 80, her son said on Tuesday.

Thomas DuTronc said in a simple post to Instagram: ‘Mum is gone.’

Hardy, known the world over for her crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics, suffered with different types of cancer, including lymphoma and laryngeal, since 2004. 

She broke through at just 18 with her first hit ‘Tous les Garcons et les Filles’ (‘All the Boys and Girls’) in 1962, and helped found the ye-ye movement, a pop-inspired cultural movement that embraced British and American rock in the 1960s.

Hardy was the only French artist to appear in a 2023 ranking of the greatest ever singers published by Rolling Stone magazine. 

Legendary French singer Francoise Hardy (pictured) has died at the age of 80, her son said on Tuesday

Hardy, known the world over for her crystalline voice and melancholy lyrics, suffered with different types of cancer , including lymphoma and laryngeal, since 2004

Paris Match magazine quoted her as saying last year that she wanted to ‘go soon and quickly, without much suffering’.

Since her diagnosis, her life was marred by illness, at one point being put in an induced coma. Her life was saved at the time by a novel form of radiation.  

She was a leading advocate for assisted suicide near the end of her life, telling the magazine that it was ‘inhumane’ for France not to legalise the controversial procedure. 

‘It is not for the doctors to accede to each request, but to shorten the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes unbearable.’

She joked at the time that while she would’ve loved to have chosen to end her own life, ‘given my small notoriety, no one will want to run the risk of being removed from the medical order even more.’

Hardy grew up in postwar Paris an anxious child with a complex family situation, she told the Daily Mail in 2011. 

Her parents were separated – Her mother worked long hours to put food on the table, while her father rarely visited, although he insisted that her mother pay for Françoise to attend convent school. 

Her grandmother constantly undermined the way she looked. 

‘She had told me throughout my childhood that I was ugly and that I was the worst creature on earth. I was concerned I would never meet anybody and that I would become a nun,’ she recalled at the time. 

More to follow.