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. 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. 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. 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." 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 ==