"Tous les garçons et les filles" (English: "All the Boys and Girls") is a song by French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy, with Roger Samyn credited as co-writer on Hardy's original 1962 yé-yé-era recording. The song recounts the feelings of a young person who has never known love and her envy of the couples that surround her. Hardy's single, released internationally, was a massive hit in France, where it spent 15 non-consecutive weeks at number one (four separate runs) between late October 1962 and mid-April 1963.

Background

Hardy performed the song in a telecast on the evening of Sunday 28 October 1962 in a musical interlude during the results of the 1962 referendum to allow direct election of the president of the French Republic. The record quickly became a success, selling 500,000 copies by the end of the year. In Italy the Italian version sold 255,000 while French version sold 140,000 copies. Françoise Hardy also recorded the song in English ("Find Me a Boy", 1964), Italian ("Quelli della mia età", 1962; collected in Françoise Hardy canta per voi in italiano, 1963), and German ("Peter und Lou", 1963; collected in In Deutschland, 1965.) Jimmy Page participated in the recording session as a session musician. The song is quoted several times by the main characters in J.L. Carr's 1988 novel What Hetty Did.

Charts

EP track list

SP track listing

Cover versions

The song has been covered by many artists in many languages, including:

Movie soundtracks

"Tous les garçons et les filles"

"Find Me a Boy"

-All These Sleepless Nights-