Yé-yé
Encyclopedia
Yé-yé was a style of pop music that emerged from France
, Québec
and Spain
in the early 1960s. The term "yé-yé" derived from "yeah! yeah!" The style expanded worldwide, due to the success of figures such as the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
.
, which was first aired in December 1959. In fact the phrase "Salut les copains" dates back to the title of a 1957 song by Gilbert Bécaud and Pierre Delanoë, who had little regard for the yé-yé music the radio show typically featured. The program became an immediate success and one of its sections ("le chouchou de la semaine" / "this week's sweetheart") turned to be the starting point for most yé-yé singers. Any song that was presented as a chouchou went straight to the top places in the charts. The Salut les copains phenomenon continued with the magazine of the same name which was first published in 1962 in France, with German, Spanish and Italian editions following shortly afterward.
Yé-yé music was a mostly European phenomenon and usually featured young female singers. France Gall
, for example, was only 16 when she released her first album, 17 when she won the Eurovision song contest (for Luxembourg
). The yé-yé songs had innocent themes such as Françoise Hardy
's "Tous les garçons et les filles
" ("All the guys and girls my age know how it feels to be happy, but I am lonely. When will I know how it feels to have someone?").
The singers were also sexy in a deliberately naïve way. Gainsbourg called France Gall the French Lolita
and, wanting to check to what extent her innocence was real, composed for her the song "Les sucettes
" ("Lollipops"): "Annie loves lollipops, aniseed lollipops, when the sweet liquid runs down Annie's throat, she is in paradise."
Among the yé-yé girls, Sylvie Vartan
played the glamorous one. She married rock star Johnny Hallyday
in 1965 and toured in America and Asia. But she stayed always a yé-yé, and as late as in 1968 she recorded the song "Jolie poupée" about a girl who regrets having abandoned her doll after growing up.
Sheila
was the most popular yé-yé girl in France with a lot of hits during the 60's and 70's.
In 1967, teen yé-yé singer Jacqueline Taïeb
won the Best Newcomer award in Cannes
at the Midem
awards for her contribution of the hit single "7 heures du matin."
Although originating in France, the yé-yé movement extended over Western Europe. Italian Mina
became the country's first female rock and roll
singer in 1959. In the following few years, she inclined to the middle-of-the-road girl pop. After her scandalous relationship and pregnancy with a married actor in 1963, she developed her image into a grownup 'bad girl'. An example of her style were the lyrics of the song "Ta-ra-ta-ta": "The way you smoke, you are irresistible to me, you look like a real man".
By contrast, her compatriot Rita Pavone
cast the image of a typical teeny yé-yé girl. For example, the lyrics of her 1964 hit "Cuore" complained how love made the protagonist suffer. In Spain, yé-yé music was at first considered to be against Catholicism. However, this didn't stop the yé-yé culture from spreading, although a bit later than in the rest of Europe; in 1968 Spanish yé-yé girl Massiel
won the Eurovision song contest with "La, la, la". Subsequently, she failed to maintain her success, and sweet, naïve-looking singer Karina
enjoyed success as the Spanish yé-yé queen with her hits "En un mundo nuevo y feliz" and "El baúl de los recuerdos".
Yé-yé grew very popular in Japan and yé-yé music is in the origins of Shibuya-kei
and Japanese idol
music. There is a Japanese version of the 1965 Eurovision-winning song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son
" composed by Serge Gainsbourg
and performed by France Gall
. Japan has released a DVD copy of Cherchez l'idole featuring Johnny Halliday, a notable yé-yé singer. One of the more popular yé-yé vocal groups were Les Surfs
who appear in Cherchez l'idole performing their hit song "Ca n'a pas d'importance."
, who wrote several hits for France Gall, Petula Clark, and Brigitte Bardot, but was considerably older and came from a jazz background) were distinct from the actual yé-yé singers. These were harmless, romantic boys singing mostly ballads and love songs. Michel Polnareff
, for example, played the tormented, hopeless lover in songs such as "Love Me Please Love Me", while Jacques Dutronc
claimed to have seduced Father Christmas's daughter in "La Fille du Père Noël". One of the more popular male yé-yé singers was Claude François
, notable for songs such as "Belles, Belles, Belles," a French-language adaptation of Eddie Hodges
' "(Girls, Girls, Girls) Made to Love".
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Québec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
in the early 1960s. The term "yé-yé" derived from "yeah! yeah!" The style expanded worldwide, due to the success of figures such as the French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
.
History
The yé-yé movement had its origins in the radio programme Salut les copains, created by Lucien Morisse and hosted by Daniel FilipacchiDaniel Filipacchi
Daniel Filipacchi is the Chairman Emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias.His life and career have been noted for his passionate involvement in art collecting, photography, and jazz...
, which was first aired in December 1959. In fact the phrase "Salut les copains" dates back to the title of a 1957 song by Gilbert Bécaud and Pierre Delanoë, who had little regard for the yé-yé music the radio show typically featured. The program became an immediate success and one of its sections ("le chouchou de la semaine" / "this week's sweetheart") turned to be the starting point for most yé-yé singers. Any song that was presented as a chouchou went straight to the top places in the charts. The Salut les copains phenomenon continued with the magazine of the same name which was first published in 1962 in France, with German, Spanish and Italian editions following shortly afterward.
Yé-yé music was a mostly European phenomenon and usually featured young female singers. France Gall
France Gall
France Gall is a popular French yé-yé singer.Gall was married to, and had a successful singing career in partnership with, French singer-songwriter Michel Berger....
, for example, was only 16 when she released her first album, 17 when she won the Eurovision song contest (for Luxembourg
Luxembourg
Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
). The yé-yé songs had innocent themes such as Françoise Hardy
Françoise Hardy
Françoise Madeleine Hardy is a French singer, actress and astrologer. Hardy is an iconic figure in fashion, music and style. She is married to the singer and movie actor Jacques Dutronc.-Biography:...
's "Tous les garçons et les filles
Tous les garçons et les filles (song)
"Tous les garçons et les filles" is a song of the French popular singer Françoise Hardy, released in 1962. It recounts the feelings of a young person who has never known love and her envy of the couples which surround her....
" ("All the guys and girls my age know how it feels to be happy, but I am lonely. When will I know how it feels to have someone?").
The singers were also sexy in a deliberately naïve way. Gainsbourg called France Gall the French Lolita
Lolita
Lolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
and, wanting to check to what extent her innocence was real, composed for her the song "Les sucettes
Les Sucettes
"Les Sucettes" is a French pop song written by Serge Gainsbourg and recorded by France Gall in 1966. One of Gall's biggest hits, it was an unusually risqué song for its time, but in performing it she was unaware of the fact....
" ("Lollipops"): "Annie loves lollipops, aniseed lollipops, when the sweet liquid runs down Annie's throat, she is in paradise."
Among the yé-yé girls, Sylvie Vartan
Sylvie Vartan
Sylvie Vartan is a French singer. She was one of the first rock girls in France. Vartan was the most productive and active of the yé-yé style artists, considered as the toughest-sounding of those. Her performance often featured elaborate show-dance choreography. She made many appearances on French...
played the glamorous one. She married rock star Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday
Johnny Hallyday is a French singer and actor. An icon in the French-speaking world since the beginning of his career, he was considered by some to have been the French Elvis Presley. He was married for 15 years to one of the most popular French female singers: Sylvie Vartan...
in 1965 and toured in America and Asia. But she stayed always a yé-yé, and as late as in 1968 she recorded the song "Jolie poupée" about a girl who regrets having abandoned her doll after growing up.
Sheila
Sheila (singer)
Sheila is a French pop singer, who became successful as a solo artist in the 1960s and 1970s and later fronted a disco act called Sheila and B. Devotion. Sheila has sold over 24,000,000 copies of records in France and was the top selling artist in France in the 1960s and 1970s...
was the most popular yé-yé girl in France with a lot of hits during the 60's and 70's.
In 1967, teen yé-yé singer Jacqueline Taïeb
Jacqueline Taïeb
Jacqueline Taïeb is a French singer and songwriter, of Tunisian descent, who achieved her greatest success as a pop and yé-yé singer in France in the 1960s....
won the Best Newcomer award in Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....
at the Midem
Midem
-MIDEM:Short for Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale, MIDEM is the world's largest music industry trade fair, which has been held annually at and around the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France, since 1967...
awards for her contribution of the hit single "7 heures du matin."
Although originating in France, the yé-yé movement extended over Western Europe. Italian Mina
Mina (singer)
Anna Maria Quaini, Grand Officer , known as Mina, is an Italian pop singer. She was a staple of Italian television variety shows and a dominant figure in Italian pop music from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s known for her three-octave vocal range, the agility of her soprano voice, and her image as an...
became the country's first female rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
singer in 1959. In the following few years, she inclined to the middle-of-the-road girl pop. After her scandalous relationship and pregnancy with a married actor in 1963, she developed her image into a grownup 'bad girl'. An example of her style were the lyrics of the song "Ta-ra-ta-ta": "The way you smoke, you are irresistible to me, you look like a real man".
By contrast, her compatriot Rita Pavone
Rita Pavone
Rita Pavone is an Italian ballad and rock singer who enjoyed success through the 1960s. Pavone is also an actress.-Singing career:...
cast the image of a typical teeny yé-yé girl. For example, the lyrics of her 1964 hit "Cuore" complained how love made the protagonist suffer. In Spain, yé-yé music was at first considered to be against Catholicism. However, this didn't stop the yé-yé culture from spreading, although a bit later than in the rest of Europe; in 1968 Spanish yé-yé girl Massiel
Massiel
María de los Ángeles Felisa Santamaría Espinoza , professionally known as Massiel, is a Spanish pop singer...
won the Eurovision song contest with "La, la, la". Subsequently, she failed to maintain her success, and sweet, naïve-looking singer Karina
Maribel Llaudes aka Karina
Karina, born María Isabel Bárbara Llaudés Santiago, is a Spanish singer who had her biggest success in the late 60s until the mid-70s. She was born in Jaén, Andalusia on December 4, 1943.-Career:...
enjoyed success as the Spanish yé-yé queen with her hits "En un mundo nuevo y feliz" and "El baúl de los recuerdos".
Yé-yé grew very popular in Japan and yé-yé music is in the origins of Shibuya-kei
Shibuya-kei
is a sub-genre of Japanese pop music which originated in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. It is best described as a mix between jazz, pop, and electropop.- Overview :...
and Japanese idol
Japanese idol
In Japanese culture, are media personalities in their teens and early twenties who are considered particularly attractive or cute and who will, for a period ranging from several months to a few years, regularly appear in the mass media, e.g...
music. There is a Japanese version of the 1965 Eurovision-winning song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son
Poupée de cire, poupée de son
"Poupée de cire, poupée de son" was the winning entry in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1965. It was performed in French by French singer France Gall, representing Luxembourg....
" composed by Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
and performed by France Gall
France Gall
France Gall is a popular French yé-yé singer.Gall was married to, and had a successful singing career in partnership with, French singer-songwriter Michel Berger....
. Japan has released a DVD copy of Cherchez l'idole featuring Johnny Halliday, a notable yé-yé singer. One of the more popular yé-yé vocal groups were Les Surfs
Les Surfs
- Members :*Monique , born May 8, 1945, died November 15, 1993*Nicole born July 21, 1946, died May 5, 2000*Coco born June 19, 1939*Pat born April 13, 1941*Rocky born May 7, 1942*Dave born December 4, 1943...
who appear in Cherchez l'idole performing their hit song "Ca n'a pas d'importance."
Yé-yé boys
While the yé-yé movement was led by female singers, it was not an exclusively female movement. The yé-yé masterminds (such as Serge GainsbourgSerge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg, born Lucien Ginsburg was a French singer-songwriter, actor and director. Gainsbourg's extremely varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize...
, who wrote several hits for France Gall, Petula Clark, and Brigitte Bardot, but was considerably older and came from a jazz background) were distinct from the actual yé-yé singers. These were harmless, romantic boys singing mostly ballads and love songs. Michel Polnareff
Michel Polnareff
Michel Polnareff, born in Nérac on 3 July 1944, is a French singer-songwriter who was very popular from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s...
, for example, played the tormented, hopeless lover in songs such as "Love Me Please Love Me", while Jacques Dutronc
Jacques Dutronc
Jacques Dutronc is a French singer, songwriter, guitarist, composer, and actor. He has been married to singer Françoise Hardy since 30 March 1981 and the two have a son . He also has been a longtime songwriting collaborator with Jacques Lanzmann...
claimed to have seduced Father Christmas's daughter in "La Fille du Père Noël". One of the more popular male yé-yé singers was Claude François
Claude François
Claude François was a French pop singer, songwriter and dancer. He wrote "Comme d'habitude," the original version of "My Way."-Early life:...
, notable for songs such as "Belles, Belles, Belles," a French-language adaptation of Eddie Hodges
Eddie Hodges
Eddie Hodges is a United States former child actor and recording artist who left show business as an adult.-Early life and career:Hodges was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, U.S. Hodges traveled to New York City with his family in 1952...
' "(Girls, Girls, Girls) Made to Love".
Cultural references
- A 1964 LifeLife (magazine)Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
article titled "Hooray for the Yé-Yé Girls" attempted to introduce three popular female yé-yé singers, Sylvie VartanSylvie VartanSylvie Vartan is a French singer. She was one of the first rock girls in France. Vartan was the most productive and active of the yé-yé style artists, considered as the toughest-sounding of those. Her performance often featured elaborate show-dance choreography. She made many appearances on French...
, SheilaSheila (singer)Sheila is a French pop singer, who became successful as a solo artist in the 1960s and 1970s and later fronted a disco act called Sheila and B. Devotion. Sheila has sold over 24,000,000 copies of records in France and was the top selling artist in France in the 1960s and 1970s...
and Françoise HardyFrançoise HardyFrançoise Madeleine Hardy is a French singer, actress and astrologer. Hardy is an iconic figure in fashion, music and style. She is married to the singer and movie actor Jacques Dutronc.-Biography:...
, to American readers. It erroneously implies that fans shouting "yé-yé" whenever the singers perform is where the term "yé-yé" comes from. - In her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'", Susan SontagSusan SontagSusan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
cited yé-yé as an example of an entire genre being annexed by the campCamp (style)Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
sensibility. - The Italian title of Out of Sight (1966 film)Out of Sight (1966 film)Out of Sight is a 1966 beach party film with elements of the spy spoof. It is the third and last of a series of films geared at teenagers by director Lennie Weinrib and producer Bart Patton for Universal Pictures...
was 007 1/2 agente per forza contro gli assassini dello yé yé.
See also
- Go-go, similarly named contemporary American musical style
- Indie popIndie popIndie pop is a genre of alternative rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid 1980s, with its roots in the Scottish post-punk bands on the Postcard Records label in the early '80s, such as Orange Juice, Josef K and Aztec Camera, and the dominant UK independent band of the mid...
, a style sometimes influenced by yé-yé
External links
- Teppaz and co: French website about sixties yé-yé singers
- Radio Yé-Yé!: A radio station playing yeye songs from the sixties.
- Les Surfs History, Biography, Photos, Videos, Links to merchandise and much more