L'amour s'en va (2:24)

“L’amour s’en va” (“Love goes away”) was the Monegasque entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1963, performed in French by French singer and actress Françoise Hardy.
Hardy had had her breakthrough as an 18 year old in late 1962 with the yé-yé hit “Tous les garçons et les filles”, which sold some 700.000 copies in France alone, and she would go on to become one of the francophone world’s most successful and popular artists of the 1960s - as well as an influential fashion icon.

“L’amour s’en va”, with lyrics by Hardy herself, is based on the music of “se telefonando”, a song sung by the Italian singer Mina. It is in the chanson style, popular in the early years of the Contest. Hardy sings about a relationship which is conducted in the knowledge that love is a fleeting thing - however this does not seem to matter to either of the lovers involved, as they “chase after it”. Hardy also recorded the song in Italian and German, as “L’amore va” and “Die Liebe geht” respectively.
The song was performed fifteenth on the night (following Belgium’s Jacques Raymond with “Waarom?” and preceding Luxembourg’s Nana Mouskouri with “À force de prier”). At the close of voting, it had received 25 points, placing 5th in a field of 16. “L’amour s’en va” however went on to win Hardy the prestigious French award Grand Prix du Disque in 1963 and some forty years after its original release the song still counts as one of her signature tunes.