The famous American magazine “Rolling Stone” ranked the 200 best singers in the world and unveiled the result on the Web… creating controversy due to several notable absentees. French star Françoise Hardy and her six-decade career were rewarded there. She reacts to this honor with RTL.
Françoise Hardy had the great honor of being part of the ranking of the 200 best singers in the world according to the magazine RollingStone and is even the only French artist to appear there. Questioned by our colleagues from RTL this Wednesday, January 4, 2023, she confides in this choice, which she finds “incomprehensible but very flattering“.
Francoise Hardy is “stunned beyond measure” to appear in RollingStone
“Of course it touches me and makes me happy, even though I don’t quite deserve to be in this ranking“, declares very humbly Françoise Hardy. The only representative of France, the singer, now 78 years old – and isolated in her Paris apartment due to fragile health – ranks 162nd of the ranking of the best singers in the world but she does not understand it and is “stunned beyond measure“.
“It is all the same abnormal that much better singers than me like for example Edith Piaf who composed Life in pinkdoes not appear, she says, Do not pay too much attention to this kind of rankings, which change a lot from one year to another. It’s quite incomprehensible but very flattering. I won’t resist the temptation to brag about it. (I’m kidding.)“, adds the interpreter of All the boys and girls.
Françoise Hardy, a pioneering artist honored
The magazine states:This is not a list of the greatest voices.” Thus, he highlights the pioneer that is Françoise Hardy, the ex-wife of Jacques Dutronc being one of the first to sing her own texts. The honor is all the greater for the artist. “It’s important to me, in that the starting point is probably a beautiful song “All over the world” which I remain proud of because I indeed wrote and composed it.“, she explains. She continues: “It was adapted into English and was successful outside of France.“.
Always so humble, the mother of Thomas Dutronc wishes to highlight her fellow singers: “But before me, there was, among others, Barbara, an immense artist-songwriter, unfortunately little known abroad, then, from 1972, Véronique Sanson, a very great singer who wrote magnificent songs that she has always composed and written. I don’t know if we know her internationally, although she lived for several years in the USA alongside Stephen Stills.“.
A ranking that rewards “originality, influence, breadth of repertoire“
Through this ranking widely decried on the Web – and produced by all the journalists of the title as well as the best contributors -, the American magazine wants to promote “the originality, influence, breadth of the artist’s repertoire and impact of their work and legacy“, details RollingStone.
Aretha Franklin sits in the top spot, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston are in the top ten. And with her 28 albums, Françoise Hardy takes 162nd place, ahead of artists like Alicia Keys or Joan Baez. To the surprise of many, Celine Dion does not appear in the magazine’s 200 best singers and it resulted in thousands of angry tweets from shocked fans as well as a press campaign tackling head-on RollingStone as for this decried choice not to include the Quebec diva with 200 million albums sold and the golden voice…
