“Tous les garçons et les filles” (English: “All the Boys and Girls”) is a song by French singer-songwriter Francoise Hardy, with Roger Samyn credited as co-writer on Hardy’s original 1962 ye-ye-era recording. The song recounts the feelings of a young person who has never known love and her envy of the couples that surround her. Hardy’s single, released internationally, was a massive hit in France, where it spent 15 non-consecutive weeks at number one (four separate runs) between late October 1962 and mid-April 1963.
The 45 rpm was presented on French Television (RTF) in 5th, 1962, few days before its release on sale in the record stores. In the Sixties the singles were not marketed in France. These discs were exclusively intended to the owners of bar and cafes having a jukebox and for promotion near the media. Between 1962 and 1966, Françoise Hardy released one French-language album per year. Each, strictly speaking, was eponymously titled and each was collected from a series of contemporary four-track, seven-inch, picture-sleeve EPs–pop music’s main format in France, known as le super 45.
Hardy performed the song in a telecast on the evening of Sunday 28 October 1962 in a musical interlude during the results of the 1962 referendum to allow direct election of the president of the French Republic. The record quickly became a success, selling 500,000 copies by the end of the year. In Italy Italian version sold 255,000.
Françoise Hardy also recorded the song in English (“Find Me a Boy”, 1964), Italian (“Quelli della mia età”, 1962; collected in Francoise Hardy canta per voi in Italiano, 1963), and German (“Peter und Lou”, 1963; collected in In Deutschland, 1965.) Jimmy Page (later of Led Zeppelin) participated in the recording session as a session musician. The song is quoted several times by the main characters in J.L. Carr’s 1988 novel What Hetty Did. The song has since been covered by a number of other artists.
Robert Dimery included the track in his 2010 reference book. 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die: and 10,001 You Must Download. Pitchfork placed it at number 170 in its list of “The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s”, with Joe Tangari writing: “Hardy’s vocal is a nonchalantly solitary midnight waltz through swinging Paris.” Rockdelux and writer Giannis Petridis listed the song as one of the best of the 20th century. Several French writers and publications have included “Tous les garçons et les filles” in their lists of the best French songs of all time, including Christian Eclimont, Hervé Bourhis, Pierre Saka and Stan Cuesta.
