Yé-yé
Yé-yé (French: [jeje] ⓘ) or yeyé[1] (Spanish: [ɟʝeˈʝe]) was a style of pop music that emerged in Western and Southern Europe in the early 1960s.
[2] The style expanded worldwide as the result of the success of figures such as French singer-songwriters Sylvie Vartan, Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy.
[4] The yé-yé movement had its origins in the radio program Salut les copains (loosely translated as "Hello, mates" or "Hello, pals"), created by Jean Frydman and hosted by Daniel Filipacchi and Frank Ténot,[5] which first aired in December 1959.
The phrase "Salut les copains" dates back to the title of a 1957 song by Gilbert Bécaud and Pierre Delanoë, who themselves had little regard for the yé-yé music that 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"), became the starting point for most yé-yé singers.
The Salut les copains phenomenon continued with a magazine of the same name that was first published in 1962 in France, with German, Spanish, and Italian ("Ciao Amici") editions following shortly afterward.
Another later hit by Gall included "Laisse tomber les filles", a cover version of which by April March called "Chick Habit" appeared in Quentin Tarantino's 2007 film Death Proof.
[11] Yé-yé helped assimilate that music in a unique, French way, and with the popularity of Salut les copains, the public began to see stars such as France Gall emerge.
Other significant girl singers of the era include teen TV star Christine Delaroche, Jocelyne, Zouzou, Evy, Cosette (Dominique Cozette) and Annie Philippe.
"[17] By contrast, her compatriot Rita Pavone cast the image of a typical teenage yé-yé girl; for example, the lyrics of her 1964 hit "Cuore" complained how love made the protagonist suffer.
At the end of the 1970s, there was a brief but successful yé-yé recurrence in France, spreading across the charts of Western Europe with electro-pop-influenced acts such as Plastic Bertrand, Lio and Elli et Jacno and, in a harder rock vein, Ici Paris and Les Calamités (a subgenre dubbed "Yé-yé punk" by Les Wampas leader Didier Wampas).
Gall's 1966 song "Baby Pop," for example, adopts a playful attitude toward the traditional institution of marriage, singing "On your wedding night, it'll be too late to regret it.
Similarly, yé-yé contributed to the creation of a youth culture within a postwar France that expressed a certain playfulness and carefree perspective on life.
The archetype of la parisienne, exuding an exotic charm and magnetic appeal, was greatly defined by the influence of the numerous yé-yé girls within the scene and created an indelible mark in the worlds of both fashion and style.
The "...escapist, ironic..."[25] facets of yé-yé enticed thousands of listeners, promoting a gaiety and glamour that intertwined with the sexual freedom and modernity of the Swinging Sixties.
