The 200 best singers of all time - Look who's 162!

Françoise Hardy (#162) epitomized French cool and Gallic heat simultaneously, with a breathy, deadpan alto that wafted like Gauloises smoke. Her words enhanced her tone: Writing her own material, unusual in the early mid-Sixties, especially for women, she also recorded work by masters like Serge Gainsbourg, and her take on Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” may be the most evocative ever recorded, his included. Dylan was so struck by her artistry, he addressed her in a poem on the back of Another Side of Bob Dylan (on their first meeting, he also serenaded her unsubtly — and unsuccessfully — with “I Want You”). Hardy recorded in English, German, and Italian, becoming an international superstar. But her magic was most pronounced in her mother tongue, as she proved on dozens of releases that still make existentialism sound impossibly elegant. —W.H.