In 1972, like most French people my age, I received a big slap with an insolent manifesto in the shape of an astounding song : Besoin De Personne (I did not need anyone).
It just took an unknown artist’s debut single for France to pass (without really realizing, at the time), from the 60s "Yéyé" era, to modern Pop-Rock times.

The LP album that followed confirmed the promise : the singer was a young blonde girl, who looked quite frail (and I do mean only looked), with a striking vibrato in her voice impossible to forget. But most importantly, the girl was a composer. She did not just sing, she wrote her own lyrics and music.
At the time, no one in France did, excepting Françoise Hardy, with her unquestionable talent and creative soul, but more in a Folk register than a Rock one, which corresponded more to the codes of the "French Folk Song" than to those of the British and American Pop or Rock scene. Or the great Barbara, also a writer and a composer and an icon of the French traditional scene of the “Chanson À Textes” -literally the “Songbook Based On Text” genre. The latter did not imply such a great care for the music, its goal being to privilege and magnify the words. Thus not akin to Rock n 'Roll.
In the US, since the early Sixties, the appearance of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Laura Nyro, the smash hit of Carole King’s Tapestry and later the first totally innovative Carly Simon’s and Joni Mitchell’s efforts at the turn of the Sixties/Seventies, made clear that things were really changing. But not in France. By the early 1970s, we were still only dealing with the Yéyé singers like Sylvie, France Gall or Sheila, interpreting songs that others wrote for them. Between the likes of Juliette Greco and Barbara or Françoise Hardy, and the Yéyé idols team, there was nothing. Nothing, until Véronique Sanson’s overnight breakthrough.
It was her truly unique creative characteristics that made me interested in Véronique Sanson from the start (not to mention, of course, the obvious quality of her music). What I heard grabbed me right away.