‘Une passion fran？aise’: The mourning of Johnny Hallyday

The article examines the responses to the death of singer Johnny Hallyday in December 2017, developing the analysis undertaken in my earlier article (Looseley, 2005). Hallyday’s passing and the astonishing expressions of grief and loss it generated brought to the fore the monumental importance he had assumed in French public life and public discourse at the close of his 60-year career. Despite his having initially been condemned or lampooned as a Trojan horse of Americanisation, by the end he was applauded for having enriched French cultural identity with American popular-cultural influences and yet maintained an essential, canny Frenchness. In this context, his public status and meanings are underpinned throughout by the problematic issue of authenticity, both musical and national. They also shed new light on the perennial cultural debate in France between particularism and universalism