Fabricating Johnny

Abstract

This article takes Johnny Hallyday’s current status as a national icon as the starting point for an investigation of the relationship between popular music, authenticity and national culture in contemporary France. Public representations of Hallyday at the time of his sixtieth birthday in June 2003 were very different from those prevailing at the start of his career, when he scandalised the cultural establishment by appearing as the conduit for US-style rock’n’roll, which seemed to symbolise the Americanisation of French cultural values. Today, he is portrayed as belonging squarely to the canonical French chanson tradition and even as the incarnation of l’exception culturelle française. This discursive transformation testifies to a parallel mutation in the status of pop music in France, which the article traces.