"Tous les garçons et les filles"

Françoise Hardy - "Tous les garçons et les filles" (1962)

Best I can tell, this song came to prominence because it was played on French national Television during a break of the coverage on the referendum related to the election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage rather than by electoral college.



Here's that compound meter we've mentioned before. Sounds like a quick waltz but underneath it all the bass is playing a slower 4/4 time. This is the B side to Hardy's first single. She wrote the lyrics and co wrote the melody. She later recorded it in Italian, German, and English. In all versions it's about a young girl who sees everyone around her hooking up while she can not find a match. Yé-Yé music is a style from Europe, specifically France and Spain, that featured a young ingenue singing a song with sweet simple lyrics and a simple melodic feel. The singers were always featured as sexy but naive.

Drums wise there might as well be one snare drum; a brush hitting all 12 beats and a drum stick hitting the rim on the two and four of the slower beat. The bass plays mostly a slow walking beat with occasional flourishes in the faster triplet pattern. One guitar is playing most of the triplets very simply, while another plays flourishes along with the bass. It's a simple little song mostly worth listening to because Hardy's voice is pleasant.