France Gall, a 16-year-old singer from Paris born two years after the liberation, epitomised the postwar public mood in France. A seemingly carefree yé-yé girl — the term derived from the yeah-yeah refrains of the Beatles — she took to the airwaves with an abandon that reminded older viewers of a young Marlene Dietrich. On stage, dressed in gold-lamé top hat and tails, she wowed not only a teenage audience desperate to have some fun, but their parents too.
Gall, whose string of hits culminated in her surprise victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965, with Poupée de cire, poupée de son (Wax Doll, Rag Doll), was not alone in presenting this new image of France. Françoise Hardy had broken on to the scene with her internationally bestselling Tous les garçons et les filles. Serge Gainsbourg was in full cry, as were Claude François, the youthful Johnny Hallyday and Julien Clerc. For a time, it seemed as if French pop might equal the exuberance of swinging London, with the “ado” (teenage) Gall as its number one adornment.
It didn’t happen, of course. Gainsbourg continued to flourish as the dark lord of French popular music and Hardy enjoyed a longer vogue than most. But Gall, like a shooting star, burnt brightly for a time, then slowly and gracefully fell to earth.
By the time of her death she was largely a footnote to the age of innocence. Whereas the death last month of Hallyday (obituary, December 6, 2017) was an epic occasion, with church and state jostling for position by the singer’s coffin, that of Gall was more a moment for national reflection.
In retrospect, much of her original oeuvre seems almost self-consciously upbeat and shallow: Poupée de cire, poupée de son; Laisse tomber les filles (Leave the Girls Alone); La Petite; Bébé requin (Baby Shark) and Teenie Weenie Boppie. However, there was also, intermittently, a disturbing undercurrent to her lyrics. La Petite told of a young girl lusted after by her father’s friend. Teenie Weenie Boppie, written by Gainsbourg, featured an LSD trip in which the singer Mick Jagger drowned. Qui se souvient de Caryl Chessman? (Who Remembers Caryl Chessman?), a duet with Gainsbourg, deprecated capital punishment in America.
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During her early years, from the time of her Eurovision triumph to roughly the death of François (by electrocution) in 1978, it would have been easy to characterise Gall as a plaything of the industry and of its strutting male performers. She had a long and difficult relationship with Gainsbourg, who referred to her as his first Lolita, and enjoyed affairs with François and Clerc. Yet throughout her career she remained focused, ringing the changes as the years advanced and, having failed to crack the lucrative English-speaking market, establishing herself as a leading artist in Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal.
She was born Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall in Paris in 1947, the only daughter of Robert Gall, a singer-songwriter who had composed for Edith Piaf in her final years. Gall’s mother, Cécile, came from a well-known showbusiness family and raised France and her brothers, Patrice and Claude, to enjoy music and performance. In 1963, aged 15, Gall submitted a showreel to the music publisher Denis Bourgeois, who worked with Gainsbourg on the Philips label. Bourgeois was impressed and arranged for her to record with the jazz composer and singer Alain Goraguer, then later with Gainsbourg.
Her first single, released on her 16th birthday, was Ne soit pas si bête (Don’t Be Stupid), which sold more than 200,000 copies and led directly to her collaboration with Gainsbourg. More hits followed, including her Wax Doll, Rag Doll Eurovision winner, with which, almost overcome by nerves, she represented not France, but Luxembourg. Pretty and blonde, she became a crowd favourite, appearing across Europe exploiting her youth and sexuality while privately falling under the spell of her svengali, whose 1971 album, Histoire de Melody Nelson, can be interpreted as the story of his relationship with a girl 20 years his junior.
It was Gainsbourg’s composition Les sucettes (Lollipops) that nearly brought Gall’s career to an abrupt end. Laden with references to oral sex, it was a huge hit in France, but scandalised the country’s moral majority, who found its lewd references disgusting. Gall said she had no idea what the song was really about and would not have recorded it if she had known. The damage was considerable, and Gainsbourg had discarded his Lolita in favour of Jane Birkin, the British actress and singer. Gall went on to develop her career in Germany, where she became an established star, before winning back her native audience in the mid-1970s with songs written by Michel Berger, who became her husband. “It will be him and nobody else,” she said, confirming a suspicion raised after she recorded Berger’s song La déclaration d’amour.
She and Berger, who died from a heart attack in 1992, had a daughter, Pauline, who had cystic fibrosis and died in 1997; and a son, Raphaël, a songwriter and musical arranger, who survives her.
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Among the highlights of this later period, which included a critically acclaimed tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Elle, elle l’a, written by Berger, was Gall’s triumphant return to the live stage. Made in France, an extravaganza featuring Brazilian drag artists, drew a large and enthusiastic audience, as did the rock opera Star-mania and Tout pour la musique, soon to become a French staple.
While active in children’s charities, Gall now kept to herself, spending time on a private island off Senegal. She may not have been a great artist, but she was a truly great performer for whom the cliché “the show must go on” could have been invented.
France Gall, singer, was born on October 9, 1947. She died of breast cancer on January 7, 2018, aged 70