Those retro enthusiasts who haven't yet explored the French yé-yé girl movement of the 1960's, you're missing out. The yé-yé girls of France and Spain produced some pretty interesting music, of which Serge Gainsbourg played no small part. Françoise Hardy and Sylvie Vartan are names you may recognize in the US; however, countless other swingin' girls found plenty of limelight in Europe, albeit briefly.
One of the hallmarks of a yé-yé girl (and I do mean "girl" - they were often 15-16 years old) was a very sexualized image and sound - each girl being a sort of swinging mod Lolita. In a previous post, I brought up Jodie Foster's brief suare with French pop in the 70's, which also exhibited that trademark sex appeal. To give you an idea, here's a line from a song called, innocently enough, "Lollipops":
"Annie loves lollipops, aniseed lollipops, when the sweet liquid runs down Annie's throat, she is in paradise ".
One flash-in-the-pan from the yé-yé movement was Christine Pilzer. The lead track on her first EP, issued in 1966, was a song about a childhood game she had played called "Dracula". Enjoy.
