Sylvie Vartan

Our pick of the pops

Bulgarian-born Sylvie Vartan was the first of France’s yé-yé girls and enjoyed dozens of hits throughout the 1960s and later.

Sylvie Vartan was born in the Bulgarian village of Iskretz on 15 August 1944. Her father had a job at the French embassy in Sofia and, when the family decided to flee the Soviet-occupied territory in 1952, it was to Paris they headed.

Eight-year-old Sylvie picked up French quickly at school.

By the time she came to study for her baccaleureat exams in her teens, she was distracted by the world of music. Her older brother, Eddie, was working for the RCA record label and it was through him that she came to record her first song, in 1961.

Singer Frankie Jordan needed a female vocalist for a cover of an American duet, Out of gas. When singer Gillian Hills turned the opportunity down at the last minute, Eddie asked Sylvie to take her place on Panne d’essence. She was uncredited for her work, and found herself in the strange position of selling her own 45 in the record shop on the Champs Élysées where she had a Saturday job.

RCA was impressed by her and offered her a solo contract. Her first EP, Quand le film est triste, a

On stage, Sylvie accompanied her songs with energetic dance routines which won her further admiration and became something of a trademark of her live shows.

In 1963 she enjoyed more success, with the EP Twiste et chante, before heading off to Nashville, in America’s Tennessee, to record her second album, backed by Elvis Presley’s musicians. The album contained both French and English-language material and spawned two huge hits: Si je chante and La plus belle pour aller danser.

A year later, while pregnant, Sylvie went back into the studio to record a new album, Il ya deux filles en moi, which reflected a growing maturity. It included several more hits, including the title track and Mister John B, a cover of the Beach Boys’ Sloop John B.

1967 saw the release of the album 2’35 de bonheur, which spawned the huge hit Par amour, par pitié. The title track, another big hit, took her as far away from her rock roots as it was possible to get.

Her next album, Comme un garçon, followed this trend of mixing pop and easy listening, and included the hits Le kid, Le jour qui vient and dance floor filler L’oiseau.

She scored another run of successes a year later with the singles Irréstiblement, La maritza, On a toutes besoin d’un homme and Face au soleil.

Her last hit of the decade came with Apprends-moi. By this time Sylvie had moved into the world of light entertainment, and recorded a TV special with Sacha Distel, the Sacha-Sylvie show, which attracted viewers in their millions.

Sylvie continued to have hits throughout the subsequent decades and in 2006, she was awarded the National order of merit as one of the most prestigious ambassadors of French music and elegance.

L'oiseau

1967

Quand tu es là

1965

Donne-moi ton amour

1967

version of US singer Sue Thompson’s Sad

movies, was released in the autumn of 1961

but wasn’t a great success, though it led to

television appearances for the young singer.

Her second solo release, Est-ce que tu le sais?, a cover of Ray Charles’s What’d I say?, issued in early 1962, was her first hit.

She followed it with another success, Le

locomotion, a version of the Little Eva song,

in the autumn of 1962, and an album, called

simply Sylvie.

Her last hit of the year came with Tous mes

copains, which sold 400,000 copies and was

her biggest success to date.

That year she made the first of a number of

film appearances, and also met the Belgian-born king of French rock, Johnny Hallyday. The pair performed together on stage and eventually began dating (and married in 1965).

Sylvie Vartan on YouTube

Cette

lettre-là

1965

Ne t'en va pas

1963

Histoire ancienne

1965

Ne le deçois pas

1962

Irrésistible-ment

1968

At the beginning of 1964, she gained even more kudos when she shared a stage with the Beatles at the Paris Olympia.

Through her agent she was offered the lead role in the film Les parapluies de Cherbourg and was disappointed to learn that he had turned it down on her behalf. The role had originally been intended for former Eurovision song contest winner Isabelle Aubret until she was hospitalised after a car accident. Catherine Deneuve took the role and the film went on to become a classic of French cinema.

Sylvie focused on her singing career and continued her run of hits, thanks to a collaboration with two Englishmen, Micky Jones (later of the group Foreigner) and Tommy Brown The pair composed original material for Sylvie, including her huge 1965 hit Cette lettre-là.

Cover cuts

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Sylvie Vartan

Est-ce que tu le sais?

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Foreign language discs

Sylvie Vartan online