Yé-yé () or yeyé () was a style of pop music that emerged in Western and Southern Europe in the early 1960s. The French term yé-yé was derived from the English "yeah! yeah!", popularized by British beat music bands such as the Beatles.(2003) Roomba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two guns, , , p. 154: "Ye-ye IBP – French for pop musician, a term inspired by the 'yeah! yeah!' exclamations of rock and roll." The style expanded worldwide as the result of the success of figures such as French singer-songwriters France Gall, Jacqueline Taïeb, Sylvie Vartan, Serge Gainsbourg and Françoise Hardy. Yé-yé was a particular form of counterculture that derived most of its inspiration from British and American rock and roll. Additional stylistic elements of yé-yé song composition include baroque, exotica, pop, jazz and the French chanson.
Origin The movement had its origins in the radio program (loosely translated as "Hello, mates" or "Hello, pals"), created by Jean Frydman and hosted by Daniel Filipacchi and Frank Ténot,Tinker, Chris. "Shaping 1960s youth in Britain and France: Fabulous and Salut lescopains." International Journal of Cultural Studies. 14 (6) (November 2011): pg. 641-657. 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. Any song that was presented as a chouchou went straight to the top places in the charts. 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.Tinker, Chris. "Shaping 1960s youth in Britain and France: Fabulous and Salut les copains." International Journal of Cultural Studies. 14 (6) (November 2011): pg. 641–657. Online. "Radios were practicing a real hype, much more than today. We, the singers, were much, much less numerous than today – and there were fewer radios. It was also the heyday of Salut les copains, and the press played an extremely important role, it could promote beginners. I remember being on the front page of Paris Match very quickly, without being very well known or doing anything special for that; this would no longer be possible nowadays. In fact, in the 1960s, we saw the advent of the mass media. At the same time, fashion had assumed a considerable importance, which it had never before had. Singers like me became emblems of fashion, in addition to chanson, which helped to maintain notoriety."
—Françoise Hardy, Télérama, 2012.
Françoise Hardy performed on Mireille Hartuch's television show in February 1962 (a year before The Beatles recorded "She Loves You"), singing "", which began with "Yeah yeah yeah yeah". After she finished, Hartuch remarked on the "yé yé" lyrics and asked her what they meant. The term was popularised by Edgar Morin in a July 1963 article in .
Yé-yé girls
Yé-yé music originated in France and was a mostly continental European phenomenon usually featuring young female singers. France Gall, for example, was only sixteen years of age when she released her first album and seventeen when she won the Eurovision Song Contest (for Luxembourg) singing the prototype bubblegum song "Poupée de cire, poupée de son".
France had a large market for the consumption of French-language songs at the time. Unlike other European nations such as West Germany, the French were more willing to support artists from their own country, singing in their native tongue.Achterberg, P., Heilbron, J., Houtman, D., and Aupers, S. "A Cultural Globalization of Popular Music? American, Dutch, French, and German Popular Music Charts (1965 to 2006)." American Behavioral Scientist. 55 (5) (May 2011): pg. 589-608. Some of the early French artists who were dabbling in rock and roll and similar genres, such as Johnny Hallyday, admit that they were creating an imitation of English-language rock music.Looseley, David. "Fabricating Johnny: French popular music and national culture." French Cultural Studies 16 (2) (June 2005): pg. 191-203. 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.
While some Yé-yé songs had innocent themes such as that of 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?"), others were intentionally sexualised. Composer and singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg once called Gall the French Lolita and, wanting to exploit her innocence, composed for her the double-entendre song "Les sucettes" ("Lollipops"): "Annie loves lollipops, aniseed lollipops, when the sweet liquid runs down Annie's throat, she is in paradise." The lyrics of the song are blatantly phallic, and the music video essentially features a group of dancing penises.
Because female singers dominated the yé-yé scene, the movement is occasionally seen as a feminist statement, even though the songwriters behind the singers were men, and the songs often infantilized their singers. That said, in lieu of a desperate and codependent voice, a fun and flirtatious point of view was often depicted. 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."
Sylvie Vartan married rock star Johnny Hallyday in 1965 and toured in America and Asia, but she remained a yé-yé at heart, and as late as 1968 she recorded the song "Jolie poupée" ("Pretty Doll"), about a girl who regrets having abandoned her doll after growing up.
Sheila portrayed the image of a well-behaved young girl. Her first hit was "L'école est finie" ("School is over") in 1962.
In 1967, teen yé-yé singer Jacqueline Taïeb won the Best Newcomer award in Cannes at the Midem awards for her hit single "7 heures du matin".
Other significant girl singers of the era include teen TV star Christine Delaroche, Jocelyne, Zouzou, Evy, Cosette (Dominique Cozette) and Annie Philippe. Some girl groups emerged, such as Les Parisiennes, influenced by acts like the Shangri-Las.
Outside of France Although originating in France, the yé-yé movement extended over Western Europe.
Italy
Italian singer Mina became her country's first female rock-and-roll singer in 1959.Nessuno. In TV esplode Mina. Galleria della canzone site. Retrieved 27 June 2007 In the following few years, she moved to middle-of-the-road girl pop. After her scandalous relationship and pregnancy with a married actor in 1963, Mina developed her image into that of a grown-up "bad girl". An example of her style may be found in the lyrics of the song "Ta-ra-ta-ta": "The way you smoke, you are irresistible to me, you look like a real man."Mina – Fumo blu (Ta ra ta ta ta ta) Musica e memoria site. Retrieved 21 January 2008 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.
Parisian-born singer Catherine Spaak had a massive success in Italy with a style very close to that of Françoise Hardy. Other significant Italian yé-yé girls include Mari Marabini, Carmen Villani, Anna Identici and the girl groups Le Amiche, Le Snobs and Sonia e le Sorelle.
United Kingdom British singer Sandie Shaw recorded Puppet on a String in 1967 and won the Eurovision Song Contest 1967, the first for the United Kingdom.
Spain
In Spain, which was under the rule of the Fascist Francoist regime, yé-yé music was at first considered to be incompatible with Catholicism. However, this did not stop the yé-yé culture from spreading, although a bit later than in the rest of Europe; in 1968 Spanish yé-yé girl Massiel won the Eurovision song contest with "La, la, la", while the sweet, naïve-looking singer Karina enjoyed success as the Spanish yé-yé queen with her hits "En un mundo nuevo" and "El baúl de los recuerdos". In the 1965 film Historias de la televisión, Concha Velasco's character, who competes against a yé-yé girl, sings La chica ye-ye ("The Yé-yé Girl"). The song became a hit, and Velasco is often remembered as la chica yeyé.
Japan Gall recorded a Japanese version of "Poupée de cire, poupée de son". The film Cherchez l'idole, featuring Johnny Hallyday, has seen a Japanese DVD release. The yé-yé vocal group Les Surfs appear in the film performing their hit song "Ça n'a pas d'importance".
Yé-Yé revival 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). Lio had a string of hits during 1980, the most famous of which was "Amoureux Solitaires". This new brand of yé-yé, although short-lived, echoed the synthesizer-driven sound that had surfaced recently with new wave music.
Yé-yé boys While the yé-yé movement was led by female singers, it was not an exclusively female movement. 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) were distinct from the actual yé-yé singers. Michel Polnareff, for example, played the tormented, hopeless lover in songs such as "Love Me Please Love Me", while Jacques Dutronc claimed to have seduced Santa Claus's daughter in "La Fille du Père Noël". Among the more popular male yé-yé singers was Claude François, notable for songs such as "Belles, Belles, Belles", a French-language adaptation of the Everly Brothers' and Eddie Hodges' "(Girls, Girls, Girls) Made to Love".
In Portugal, the first yé-yé bands appeared in Coimbra in 1956, most notably Os Babies, led by José Cid. Other Portuguese bands followed afterward, including Os Conchas, Os Ekos, Os Sheiks, Os Celtas, Conjunto Académico João Paulo, Os Demónios Negros and singers such as Daniel Bacelar.
In Greece, the first pop-rock bands associated with the yé-yé culture appeared in the early 1960s, mainly in Athens and Thessaloniki. The most popular of those bands were the Forminx, the Sounds, the Charms, the Idols, and the Olympians. This scene also gave rise to the Greek Néo kýma movement, as well as to Greek rock music.
Impact of yé-yé