France Gall

France Gall, born Isabelle Gall in Paris in 1947, was one of the defining voices of French yé-yé pop in the 1960s. She rose to fame as a teenager with songs written for her by top composers of the era, and her breakthrough came in 1965 when she won the Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg with «Poupée de cire, poupée de son», a song penned by Serge Gainsbourg that turned her into a star well beyond France, especially in Italy and Germany.

Her collaboration with Gainsbourg continued with playful, double-entendre-laden hits like «Les Sucettes», before her career took a deeper, more personal turn after she met composer and singer Michel Berger in the mid-1970s. Their professional and romantic partnership produced some of her most enduring work, including «Il jouait du piano debout» and «Résiste», songs that traded yé-yé lightness for more mature, emotionally resonant pop and cemented Berger and Gall as one of French music's great creative couples.

Outside music, the couple was known for humanitarian work, including efforts to fight drought and famine in Mali. Berger's death in 1992 and the death of their daughter Pauline in 1997 were devastating losses that led Gall to largely withdraw from public performing. In 2015 she returned to the stage in a tribute to Berger with the musical «Résiste», built around his songs. She died in Paris in January 2018, remembered as one of the most beloved and versatile singers in French pop history.