Françoise Hardy “Oh oh chéri”

Françoise Hardy’s earliest recordings may or may not be too cloyingly syrupy for your tastes, depending on your capacity for children’s music and, well, the French. Not that Hardy is a children’s entertainer. Rather, her earliest songs are steeped in early Europop sensibilities and a general youth-oriented twee-ness (widely known as Yé-yé) that comes across today as  a bit too much to be taken seriously. Regardless, I find her early work highly rewarding and don’t doubt its influence. Its being French can’t be overcome, but we perservere, don’t we?

Shared here is “Oh oh chéri”, one of the more notable tracks from Hardy’s 1962 debut Tous les garçons et les filles. Its bouncy melody–I keep wanting to say effervescent–is too much fun. I can scarcely speak a word of French, but that rarely gets in the way of singing along.

Françoise Hardy “Oh oh chéri”