France Gall, a 16-year-old singer from Paris born two years after the liberation, epitomised the postwar public mood in France. A seemingly carefree yé-yé girl — the term derived from the yeah-yeah refrains of the Beatles — she took to the airwaves with an abandon that reminded older viewers of a young Marlene Dietrich. On stage, dressed in gold-lamé top hat and tails, she wowed not only a teenage audience desperate to have some fun, but their parents too.
Gall, whose string of hits culminated in her surprise victory in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965, with Poupée de cire, poupée de son (Wax Doll, Rag Doll), was not alone in presenting this new image of France. Françoise Hardy had broken on to the