Yé-yé

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Yé-yé (French pronunciation: [jeje]) 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!" yell.^[1]

History

The yé-yé movement had its origins in the radio programme "Salut les copains", created by Lucien Morisse and hosted by Daniel Philippacci, 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 first 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 afterwards.

Yé-yé music was unique in a number of ways: first, it was the only musical movement so far to be spearheaded by females; second, it was a mostly European phenomenon (although it grew very popular in Japan and yé-yé music is in the origins of Shibuya-kei and Japanese idol music; there is even a Japanese version of the 1965 Eurovision-winning song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son" composed by Serge Gainsbourg and performed by France Gall). Yé-yé girls were young (Gall herself was only 16 when she released her first album, 17 when she won the Eurovision song contest for Luxembourg) and innocent (most of their songs talked of finding the first love, 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?").

They 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^{[clarification needed]}, 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.

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 rocker 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, and 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, and 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 boys

The yé-yé movement was led by female singers, but there were males, too. There was a difference between the yé-yé masterminds (such as Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several hits for France Gall, Petula Clark, and Brigitte Bardot, but was considerably older and came from a jazz background) and 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 please love me", while Jacques Dutronc claimed to have seduced Father Christmas's daughter in "La fille du pere Noel". However both of them gained more success after the end of the yé-yé years, so they could not properly be called yé-yé singers. Claude François is possibly the most famous yé-yé singer who danced with spirited energy to songs such as "Belles, Belles, Belles," a French-language adaptation of Eddie Hodges' "(Girls, Girls, Girls) Made to Love".

Cultural References

• A 1964 Life article entitled "Hooray For the Yé-Yé Girls" attempted to introduce three popular female yé-yé singers, Sylvie Vartan, Sheila and Françoise Hardy, to American readers. It erroneously implies that fans shouting "yé-yé" whenever the singers perform is where the term "yé-yé" comes from.^[2]

• In her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'", Susan Sontag cited yé-yé as an example of an entire genre being annexed by the camp sensibility.^[3]

References

1. ^ (2003) "Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos", ISBN 1859843689, 9781859843680, p.154: "Ye-ye - French for pop musician, a term inspired by the 'yeah! yeah!' exclamations of rock and roll..."
2. ^ Yé-Yé Land
3. ^ Susan Sontag: Notes On "Camp"

External links

• Yé-Yé Land: A site dedicated to the genre
• Teppaz and co: French website about sixties yé-yé singers
• Radio Yé-Yé!: A radio station playing yeye songs from the sixties.