It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Les Playboys” by Jacques Dutronc
December 27, 1966
“Les Playboys” by Jacques Dutronc
#1 on the IFOP Top 100 Singles chart (France), December 3, 1966 – January 13, 1967
As with most of Europe, it took a little while for France to develop its own brand of rock ‘n’ roll. Apart from yé-yé, a rock-influenced style of pop typically performed by young female singers, early attempts were either parody or slavish imitation from the likes of Johnny Hallyday, who gave himself an American-ish name, dressed in blue jeans, and added French lyrics to English-language rock hits.
Hallyday proved highly successful in the French-speaking world because he put a very foreign music in a native lyrical and musical context. For non-francophone rock fans, however, Hallyday is essentially irrelevant; why go for the pale imitation when you have the real thing?
Toward the middle of the ‘60s, however, French rock ‘n’ roll started developing its own distinctive flair. One of the first of these more sophisticated rockers, Jacques Dutronc, had released a couple of rock singles early in the decade as part of the band El Toro et les Cyclones. He became more notable a few years later, however, as a staff writer for the Disques Vogue record label, penning songs for superstar (and future wife) Françoise Hardy.
It was when writing for another Vogue artist, however, that Dutronc got his big break. He and writing partner Jacques Lanzmann, a novelist and editor for the men’s magazine Lui, penned a song for a would-be “French Dylan” named Benjamin. “Et moi, et moi, et moi” parodied the navel-gazing style of another hit singer, Antoine, but Dutronc and Lanzmann were unhappy with Benjamin’s rendition. After several attempts to find another artist to do justice to the song, Dutronc himself recorded it.
“Et moi, et moi, et moi” made Dutronc a star overnight, soaring to #2 on the French pop charts. It also introduced Dutronc as a wildly divergent rock star from the Hallyday archetype. Whereas Hallyday presented a self-serious imitation of the Anglo-American rock star cliché, Dutronc embraced his Frenchness, donning sexy-professor attire and dryly dropping sardonic lines.
While Hallyday relied on covers and professional songwriters, Dutronc, with Lanzmann, consistently wrote his own material — and had a pretty sharp band to boot. If Hallyday were a cut-rate Mick Jagger, Dutronc was Ray Davies with the irony dialed to 11, with an affinity for social commentary and his nation’s cultural milieu.
“Les Playboys,” the follow-up single to “Et moi, et moi, et moi,” is one such example, in which Dutronc critiques the conspicuous consumption of playboys “qui roulent en Ferrari à la plage comme en ville/ qui vont chez Cartier comme ils vont chez Fauchon” (“who drive a Ferrari at the beach as in town/ who go to Cartier as they go to Fauchon”).
But Dutronc isn’t merely a dry or jealous observer — in the chorus, he boasts “Moi j’ai un piège à fille, un piège tabou/Un joujou extra qui fait crac boum hue/ Les filles en tombent à mes g’noux” (“Me, I have a girl trap, a secret trap/ an extra toy that goes crack, boom, ooh/ the girls fall to my knees”).
The song’s theme of the flashy rich man being defeated by the poorer but more sexually gifted guy is common in American rock and R&B, but Dutronc’s wry presentation and its French-pop stylings make it entirely new.
“Les Playboys” reigned atop the French pop charts for six weeks, confirming Dutronc as a bona fide star. Dutronc’s success proved that francophone audiences were ready for a rock music of their own, one that could evoke the spirit of rock while reinventing it in a distinctly French fashion.
While his popularity didn’t translate to the English-speaking world, Dutronc did become a cult icon similar to his wife Françoise Hardy. As a figurehead of Gallic cool, Dutronc’s style was widely adopted by Anglo francophiles — something Hallyday never accomplished.
