An icon of the 60s

In the hushed silence of her Parisian apartment, where objects seemed to hold their breath so as not to disturb the tranquility of the place, Geneviève, formerly known by the glittering stage name of "Chrystale", let the days pass with chosen discretion. The walls were decorated with soft-hued still lifes, a far cry from the psychedelic posters and black-and-white portraits that had once plastered teenage girls' bedrooms and Morris columns. From her sixties, those in which she had been a muse of emerging pop, a slender figure and a tangy voice which embodied the carefreeness of an era, all that remained were a few vinyl records stored in the back of a cupboard, and a small lacquer box containing faded photos.

She was seventy-eight years old. Her hair, once a bold platinum blonde, was now a silvery white, neatly styled. She read a lot, took care of her plants, and received only rare friends, witnesses of a life long after the spotlight. Chrystale's name had become a footnote in musical encyclopedias, a curiosity for collectors of yé-yé rarities.

Then, one morning, a letter arrived, bearing the stamp of a university. A young doctoral student in the sociology of popular culture, Léo Martin, was preparing a thesis on female figures in music in the 1960s in France and requested an interview. He had, he wrote, been particularly marked by the "subversive modernity" of Chrystale's texts, by this unique mixture of apparent candor and biting irony which distinguished her from her contemporaries. Geneviève read the letter with a mixture of annoyance and a curiosity that she did not want to admit to herself. “Subversive modernity”… No one had ever used these terms about it at the time. We talked about her freshness, her pep, her Courrèges dresses.

She ignored the first letter, then the second, more detailed, where Léo mentioned an obscure B side, a song called Les Idoles de Carton, which she had written herself and which had been quickly withdrawn from the airwaves for its tone considered too critical. That song... She had almost forgotten it. A small ember reignited under the ashes of his memory. Reluctantly, she ended up agreeing to a brief interview, making it clear that she had "not much more to say about this period."

Léo arrived, a young man with respectful enthusiasm, his arms full of his own copies of Chrystale's records, the covers slightly worn. He did not press her with questions about the rumors of the time, the supposed loves, the rivalries. He spoke to her about his texts, about the impact they had had on his own mother, a teenager in the sixties. He makes her listen to The Cardboard Idols. The voice of her twenty-year-old fills the silent living room, so clear, so confident in its veiled criticism of show business. Geneviève listened, her face impassive, but inside, a flood of images and sensations was rushing.

The smoky recording studios, the first time she heard her song on the radio, the exhilarating sensation of concerts in overheated rooms, the fittings with young designers who are revolutionizing fashion. She saw again the face of Serge, this cynical and brilliant lyricist who had written his first successes before she dared to impose her own words. She remembered the camaraderie with other artists, but also the dizzying loneliness at the height of fleeting success, the constant pressure to stay "up to date", the fear of falling, which had inevitably arrived when new idols, even younger, even more "modern", had eclipsed her. She also remembered the strange, almost guilty relief she had felt when she decided to leave everything behind, to simply become Geneviève again.

"That song," Leo said when the silence returned, "it was incredibly early. No one spoke like that at the time, especially not a singer perceived as light."

Geneviève gave a rare smile. "Maybe the lightness was a good disguise," she whispered. She got up, went to the cupboard and took out the lacquer box. She opened it and took out a slightly dog-eared photo. We saw her, young, laughing out loud, alongside another icon of the time, a rebel singer who died too soon. "We wrote 'Cardboard Idols' together one night, after a disastrous concert where everything sounded wrong." It was a secret she had never shared.

The interview lasted much longer than expected. Geneviève did not tell everything, keeping to herself the most intimate wounds, the most stubborn regrets. But she spoke of this thirst for freedom, of this desire to shake up the codes a little under a wise exterior. She looked at the young man who, in front of her, saw not a quiet old lady, but a discreet pioneer, a facet of an era that he sought to understand.

When Léo left, leaving behind an atmosphere full of echoes, Geneviève did not feel empty or bitter. A form of subtle peace had settled. She returned to the window, watching Parisian life go on. Chrystale was no longer a ghost from the past, nor a costume too heavy to wear. A bold young woman she had been, a spark in a decade of great upheaval. And this spark, she now understood, still shone a little, discreetly, in the eyes of those who knew where to look.

Léo Martin's visit had left a more lasting imprint than Geneviève would have initially supposed. In the weeks that followed, a new curiosity pushed her to delicately open the door to the past. She took Chrystale's old vinyls out of their cardboard slumber, no longer with the slightly weary melancholy of the past, but with an almost analytical ear. She listened to her own voice again, that of her twenty years, discerning in it, beyond the obligatory freshness of the yé-yé, this touch of irony, this crack that Léo had described as "modern". The lacquer box containing the photographs is also opened more often. The smiling faces, the improbable outfits, the intense looks of this bygone era appear to her less like ghosts than like actors in a strange and hectic play of which she had, for a time, been one of the headliners.

A few months passed. Then, one morning, she received an envelope containing a separate reprint from a specialized cultural magazine. It was Leo's article. He analyzed with finesse the role of "text singers" hidden under pop exteriors in the sixties, and a large space was devoted to Chrystale, to Les Idoles de Carton. Léo had attached a handwritten note to him, evoking the positive reception of his work and the new interest that some of his colleagues and enlightened amateurs had in this forgotten song. Geneviève read the article with suppressed emotion, a mixture of discreet pride and an old apprehension in the face of any form of exposure.

This apprehension materialized shortly after in another letter. A small independent label, passionate about the rediscovery of French musical gems, had read Léo's article. They were fascinated by the story of Les Idoles de Carton and ardently wanted to reissue it, perhaps within a compilation of engaged or subversive songs of the time. They seek his agreement.

The proposal destabilizes her. Talking to Leo in the privacy of his living room was one thing. Seeing this song, so personal, so critical, born from a night of youthful disillusionment, return to a public life, however modest, was another. She loses sleep a few nights, weighing the pros and cons. The desire to remain in its comfortable anonymity struggled with a new thought: what if this song, after all, still had something to say? What if this little stone thrown into the well-polished garden of show business in the sixties could still make a few ricochets?

She remembered the feeling of validation she felt during her conversation with Leo, this feeling that the somewhat rebellious young woman she had been was finally understood, recognized for something other than her short dresses and her heady refrains. The idea that “Cardboard Idols” could reach a new generation, or simply please a few curious ears, began to gain ground.

Finally, Geneviève made her decision. She contacts the label. She accepted the reissue, but under strict conditions. No interviews, no recent photographs, no exploitation of his current image. Simply the song, and the story that Léo had told so well about it. And she added a clause: any royalties that accrued to her would be paid in full to an association helping young musicians to produce their first works. She asked Léo to help her formalize this aspect, the young man thus becoming, more than a simple researcher, a discreet executor of this part of her artistic past.

The record was released a few months later, without media fanfare, but it found its audience. Reviews in specialized magazines, appearances on niche radio stations, laudatory comments on music enthusiast forums. Geneviève followed this from afar, with an amused distance. One day, passing by a small independent record store, she saw the cover of the compilation in the window, with her name, Chrystale, among others. She didn't stop, but a slight smile floated on her lips.

She aspired to no return, no belated recognition. But in the silence of her apartment, sometimes listening to the wind whispering in the trees in the courtyard, she experienced a form of new serenity. A small part of herself, long buried, had found the light again, not under the blinding spotlight of yesteryear, but like a note of music, still vibrating gently in the spirit of the times, transmitted with respect and integrity. The echo of his rebellious youth had found a new, and peaceful, resonance.