The Power of Music & Online Communities
Remembering Françoise Hardy 1944-2024
It’s been deeply touching to see the outpouring of grief for Françoise Hardy here in America. The French pop chanteuse is a beloved figure around the world but that wasn’t always the case. I'm old enough to remember how difficult it was to find her music in the U.S. Thankfully that all changed in the 1990s due to an explosion of BBS mailing lists where weirdo music fans like yours truly could easily exchange tapes and information about international artists and bands. As a result, a whole new world of sound opened up to many of us and eventually, there came a trickle followed by a minor flood of yé-yé music compilations available in record stores, typically imported from France, Britain, or Japan.
When that avenue ran dry blogs such as the indispensable Spiked Candy filled the void and music obsessives began sharing rare tracks or whole albums online that were impossible to find in the U.S. unless you had international connections or deep pockets.
Around the same time, I started my own music blog called Let's Go J-Sound! devoted to vintage Japanese soundtracks, Group Sound, and Shōwa-era J-pop, (basically the Japanese equivalent of yé-yé) also known as kayōkyoku. I’ve had a lifelong interest in Japanese pop culture thanks to having a much older cousin who lived and worked in Japan teaching English. While living there he invited my recently widowed mother and me to visit him.
I was just a child at the time but during that long hot summer spent in Japan, I fell in love with the country, its people, and its pop culture. As I grew older my interest in Japan grew with me and I eventually became obsessed with Shōwa-era cinema, manga, and music. Work opportunities allowed me to visit Japan a few more times as an adult and I brought back lots of music that I wanted to share with others. This led to the creation of my short-lived Let’s Go J-Sound! blog.
It's easy to take the World Wide Web and social media for granted now and complain about internet addiction, trolls, and dwindling attention spans. But I want to remember Françoise Hardy by remembering the incredible impact that crate-digging audio addicts had on the world.
BBS mailing lists, chat boards, and carefully curated blogs introduced many of us to new artists we would have never experienced otherwise. They brought people from different parts of the world together through our shared love of music and a desire for new audio experiences. In the process, they transformed our understanding of music history for the better. You can now say a word like “yé-yé” or “J-pop” and most, or at least a reasonable amount of people will probably know what you’re talking about. Thirty short years ago that wasn’t the case.
It can be argued that music fans built the internet, and some very smart writers have, but I won’t bang that drum here. I will say that we definitely helped bring a spirit of sharing, cooperation, exploration, and experimentation into what was often seen as a rather culturally bleak and cold space occupied by tech nerds, and gaming geeks. I’m a bit of a gaming geek myself so I’m not trying to marginalize them here, but music obsessives were a different breed of nerd. There was something about the sharing and celebrating of music, along with the different cultures, that resonated deeply with me. Others may have found that same experience through gaming channels.
On a more personal note, my introduction to French pop music, and in particular Françoise Hardy who quickly became my favorite yé-yé girl, led me down lots of interesting avenues. Along with expanding my understanding of popular music, I gained a much broader appreciation for international cultures and was inspired to explore things like vintage fashion trends and start blogging about music and cinema. It’s worth noting that my first website was devoted to the French actor Alain Delon, which I created on the dinosaur-age free web-building platform known as GeoCities. The Delon site was part of the GeoCities “Paris/Left Bank” neighborhood, which allowed budding Francophiles like myself to connect and share their passions.
More recently I decided to become a certified astrologer and afterward, my partner gifted me with a copy of Françoise Hardy’s biography The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles: A Memoir. Hardy’s willingness to risk the side-eye of her peers by becoming an astrologer herself was one of the many factors that inspired me, a fellow Capricorn Sun with a similar Saturnine nature, to do the same.
Would I be the woman I am today without Hardy’s influence and the influence of those early social networks? It’s possible but I have my doubts. The power of music can be profound. And the ephemeral connections I made online were often more impactful than the relationships I was having in the real world where I was surrounded by people who had no interest in French and Japanese culture. So while I’m mourning Hardy I find myself mourning the early days of the internet which seemed full of promise and possibility.
I miss the narrowly focused mailing lists full of polite generous people who knew how to have a civil conversation. I miss the GeoCities websites built with lots of love and ugly graphics. I miss the early days of blogging and filesharing sites when the charitable behavior of strangers seemed limitless. Despite my nostalgia, I’m not blinded by my rose-colored glasses. Mailing lists were occasionally disrupted by an idiot with no social skills. My GeoCities website caught the attention of a creepy cyberstalker who would send me disturbing emails as if he was addressing Alain Delon. And blogs and filesharing sites attracted their fair share of trolls. But today the internet is a very different beast than it was thirty years ago thanks to the corporate takeover of online spaces.
The current capital-driven environment encourages the passive consumption of commercial content. Social spaces are drowning in clickbait designed to make us shop or make us irritated. Worthless memes and feel-good slogans get shared endlessly. And genuine human interaction is limited and dictated by the systems that want to keep us irritable so we’ll continue to scroll in search of the next unsatisfying dopamine high.
It's easy to blame the current state of things on big bad corporations or the government that subsidizes them, and they should be criticized. We should demand more control of online spaces, which have become our public squares. But people also have to take responsibility for their behavior.
Too many of us share a steady stream of junk on our social media feeds. Too many of us lack discretion and seem to have no interest in exploring music avenues outside the preapproved content dumped on us by massive media campaigns. Too many of us repeat the propaganda spit out by our governments in order to fuel division and spread fear. Too many of us have become complacent, lazy, and beholden to algorithms or viral trends.
Music and online communities have power. But we’re currently giving that power away to corporations, governments, and capital. To quote myself from a previous post I shared back in April:
“I believe that art, music, literature, and film can be instruments of change and transformation. They can illuminate paths forward in this current climate of fear.”
My introduction to Françoise Hardy certainly changed me. And my interactions with music enthusiasts in online communities who freely shared their knowledge and audio treasures made me a more empathetic human being. I was inspired to explore aspects of French culture previously inaccessible to a young woman who grew up in a small working-class American town with one record shop. And I was emboldened to create my own websites and blogs where I could share my passions and music collection with others who may never have had the opportunity to visit Japan.
In honor of Françoise Hardy I want to encourage that sense of sharing and community I remember from the early days of the internet here on my Substack so soon I’ll be launching a new weekly feature I’m currently calling Pages from My Journal. The title may change but the content won’t. It will contain examples of all the wonderful things I’m currently reading, watching, and listening to every week with appropriate links when necessary. I hope it will elevate some creatives who are doing good work and deserve more of your attention. I hope it will encourage investigation and exploration. I hope it will inspire some of you to step outside your comfort zones and shake off the algorithm chains. And last but not least, I hope it might persuade you to reclaim your power and invest your time and energy in more nourishing pursuits that aren’t dictated by conventional trends.
If this interests you I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Beats & Transgressions.
“There are so many dreams beyond our nights, and so much sunshine beyond our gray walls. But we can't see it when we stay at home. There is so much sky above our roof. Is the door so old that it won't open, or are we at home because we're afraid of catching a chill?”
― Françoise Hardy
A few further reading and viewing suggestions: