French yé-yé pop, named after the English “yeah, yeah,” gained global popularity in the 60s and early 70s. Its style is known as “Camp,” which scholar Susan Sontag describes as characterized by “its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Camp style reflects the postmodern practice of parody, which literary theorist, Linda Hutcheon, writes contains elements like “ironic quotation, pastiche, appropriation, or intertextuality.” Although the yé-yé girls consisted of a larger group, the four most prominent names in Francophone teen bubblegum pop were France Gall, Sylvie Vartan, Sheila, and Françoise Hardy.
Read “Notes on Camp” by Susan Sontag. Read The Chicago School of Media Theory, on “camp.”
More recently, an American interest in yé-yé pop piqued through Mathew Weiner’s period television drama, Mad Men.
