In "Songs about you and us", Françoise Hardy reviews all of her texts, written in more than 50 years of career.

More than 200 titles that the singer acknowledges having sometimes rediscovered with this book.

For Europe 1, she looks back on her musical journey and tells the sources of her inspiration.

INTERVIEW

Singer Françoise Hardy released a book dedicated to her more than 50 years of career.

In the book

Chansons sur toi et nous

, published by Equateurs, she recounts her sources of inspiration, the framework of her writing and reviews all her texts, which she embellishes with comments.

Over 200 tracks ranging from 1962, the year of

All the Boys and Girls,

to 2018, the year of the

Nobody Else

album

.

 Guest of Patrick Cohen in Europe Midi, she explains having forgotten several of her songs, and having just rediscovered some of them thanks to this book which tells her long musical journey.

>> Find Patrick Cohen's interviews every day on Europe 1 at 12:40 p.m. as well as in replay and podcast here

"There are songs that I forgot and it was fans who immediately let me know. During the sixties, a lot of great 45s were released. So the songs that were on them, we couldn't find them. on albums then. Suddenly, I did not have them ", amused the author and composer.

Like the song written for Patrick Juvet.

"I really have no recollection of it. Especially since in the text, there is a word that is used, which is not at all part of my vocabulary and probably that it was Patrick Juvet who added it. I forgot the word, moreover, it is so unusual, "she continued.

"Some titles are so far from my reality"

What surprised the singer during this flashback on the titles that made her career, it is also some of her texts that she describes as "naive, repetitive and without much interest".

"What bothers me most in the end is that they are so far removed from my reality", regretted Françoise Hardy, who also explains in this book granting a major importance to the melody.  

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"In my opinion, the text should be at the service of the melody, and not the other way around. I met two artists who think the opposite of me. Juliette Gréco, who was formal, and then Renaud. The fact that he did not want the song

Mistral winner to 

appear on his album when it is arguably the most beautiful melody he has composed, says a lot. Imagine, it had to be his wife who told him: ' If you don't put it in your album, I'll divorce '", the singer recalled. 

"I didn't know anything about music"

Even if she is proud to have composed songs like

Doigts

, in 1971, Françoise Hardy also explained her choice to then turn to composers.

"I didn't know anything about music and I said to myself that if I wanted to renew myself, I really had to study music a little more, chords ... So I thought it would go faster to m 'address to composers like Michel Berger, or Gabriel Yared, who was an exceptional musician ".

A book in which we indeed meet emblematic personalities like Michel Berger precisely, or even Jean-Marie Périer, Etienne Daho, Véronique Sanson, Serge Gainsbourg or Jacques Dutronc, and which ultimately tells a lot of memories, autobiographical references, moments happy life, but also sometimes cockroaches.