Françoise Hardy – La Maison Où J’ai Grandi

As I’ve written before, I do adore some lovely French pop, especially sung by a breathy female voice. I’m not sure if this is despite my speaking hardly a word of French, or because of it. Maybe it’s just peaceful to listen to pretty voices singing pretty songs whose words I don’t understand, and maybe that’s why French pop is often a favorite for Sunday mornings.

French is my favorite language to hear spoken – just a delight. It’s not for lack of trying that I speak no French. Back in the days when we were regularly vacationing in Montreal, I was embarrassed by my lack of French, which was okay in those days – as long as they didn’t think you were from Ontario, most Quebecois would speak English to you. Although there was one time when we were in a more remote part of Quebec and I found myself unable to find a word that even resembled ice (as a result, I will never forget glace) – that was a tad embarrassing. So I did try various methods, including Berlitz cassettes, some primary books and even a year of community college French taught by a woman from Haiti with an outrageous accent that would never play in Quebec. But the reality is, I can’t learn a language without an opportunity to regularly hear and speak it, and immersion in a French-speaking environment never happened, so most of my vocabulary fell away, and I never got to real grammar. (Although, recently watching “Les Paraluies de Cherbourg” for the first time, I found that when the words were sung, quite slowly, I could pick up far more than I would have thought.)

So, if one is infatuated with breathy French pop, one will buy Francoise Hardy albums when they appear at one’s favorite magasin de disques. This one was from 1966, done in a very nice 2017 rerelease.