A muse for musicians: 11 songs inspired by Brigitte Bardot

NEW YORK (AP) — In addition to being a 1960s French sex symbol, actor, singer and animal welfare activist, Brigitte Bardot was a muse to many — in particular, musicians.

Her name, with its alliterative cadence, became synonymous with a kind of classic beauty. In songs, Bardot is often not Bardot the woman, but a symbol for desire — shorthand for a bombshell. Decades removed from the peak of her screen fame, contemporary performers continue to sing her name despite her many controversies, including being convicted five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred and provocative comments about the #MeToo movement.

It may not be her main legacy, but Bardot, who died Sunday in southern France, will live in on the songs that mention her. Across genre and language, here is a sampling.

The last track of the canonical “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” exhibits Dylan's wicked verbosity and elastic folk. “Well, my telephone rang it would not stop / It’s President Kennedy callin’ me up / He said, My friend, Bob, what do we need to make the country grow? I said my friend, John, Brigitte Bardot,” he sings. “Anita Ekberg / Sophia Loren / Country’ll grow.”

The Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso composed the protest song at the beginning of the tropicalismo movement; it became a hallmark of his career and one of the best-known Brazilian songs of all time. In it, he sings, “Em caras de presidentes / Em grandes beijos de amor / Em dentes, pernas, bandeiras / Bomba e Brigitte Bardot” (“In faces of presidents / In big kisses of love / In teeth, legs, flags / Bombs and Brigitte Bardot”).

A central architect of French pop, singer Serge Gainsbourg wrote this duet for himself and Bardot. It's styled after a poem the outlaw Bonnie Parker wrote, titled “The Trail’s End,” shortly before she and partner Clyde Barrow were killed.

Jaunty piano and Elton John's ascendent vocal melodies, all for a song with a less-than-optimistic title. John sings the words from his longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin: “I’d make an exception / If you want to save my life / Brigitte Bardot gotta come / And see me every night.”

The Pretenders know a little something about the social power of Bardot. The English rock band's principal songwriter and frontperson Chrissie Hynde sings: “When love walks in the room / Everybody stand up / Oh, it’s good, good, good / Like Brigitte Bardot.”

Maybe it's a bit unfair to include Billy Joel's classic here, which name-drops more than most pop hits, but it's telling that Bardot gets a shoutout alongside “Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev / Princess Grace, Peyton Place, trouble in the Suez,” and just after “Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team / Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland.” Not an obscure name in sight.

“Stratford-On-Guy,” from influential indie rocker Liz Phair's seminal album “Exile in Guyville,” takes aim at the dude-centric music scene. But it also uses Bardot to describe a flight attendant who reminds her that while communities can be insular, they all look the same from 30,000 feet. “The stewardess came back and checked on my drink / In the last strings of sunlight, a Brigitte Bardot,” she sings. “’Cause I had on my headphones along with those eyes / That you get when your circumstance is movie-sized.”

In the second verse of “Warlocks,” from the funky California rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers, singer Anthony Kiedis near-scats, “Ring side and blow-by-blow / Another main event at the old Rainbow / We’re comin’ right on top of the tupelo / When she looks just like Brigitte Bardot.” It's a descriptive image of Los Angeles — even with the inclusion of Bardot.

Kali Uchis and Jorja Smith's dreamy collaboration imagines “Bardot” as shorthand for a make-out session with a complicated partner. “The world’s been asking us to lose control,” Uchis swoons. “All we ever do is French like Brigitte Bardot (Brigitte Bardot).”

Olivia Rodrigo is best known for her spirited punk-pop, but she's also a power balladeer, lest anyone forget it was “drivers license” that made her a household name. “Lacy,” a cut from “Guts,” is soft and slow, with Rodrigo obsessing over a woman she is not. It's a jealous song, and ripe for a Bardot mention. “Smart, sexy Lacy, I’m losin’ it lately / I feel your compliments likе bullets on skin,” she whisper-sings. “Dazzling starlet, Bardot reincarnatе / Well, aren’t you the greatest thing to ever exist?”

It arrives right at the top to describe an addictive crush. “She was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot,” the pop powerhouse Chappell Roan sings over springy synths and cheery guitar riffs. “She showed me things I didn’t know.”

FILE - French Actress Brigitte Bardot, left, attends a news conference in Mexico City, Jan. 18, 1965. Seated next to her is producer Louis Malle and at right is French actress Jeanne Moreau. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot at a television studio in Paris, France, Oct. 1974, during the filming of a program "For You Madam". (AP Photo/File)

FILE - French film actress Brigitte Bardot appears at the Mount Royal Hotel in London on April 9, 1959. (AP Photo/Dave Dawson, File)

A woman touches a poster showing actor Brigitte Bardo near her home in Saint-Tropez, southern France, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2025 after the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91. (AP Photo/Philippe Magoni)

FILE - French actress Brigitte Bardot poses for photographers on a lawn in the garden of the Excelsior Hotel on the Lido of Venice, Italy, Sept. 2, 1958. (AP Photo/Walter Attenni, File)

INCHEON, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 2, 2026--

The Samsung Biologics Labor Union criticized Samsung Biologics after the Incheon Regional Labor Relations Commission (Case No. Incheon 2025 Discrimination 10) ruled the company’s exclusion of contract workers from holiday gift benefits constituted discriminatory treatment. Following this, the company changed counsel from Bae, Kim & Lee LLC to Kim & Chang, South Korea’s largest and most premium corporate law firm, and filed for review before the National Labor Relations Commission.

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The union does not view this as a minor welfare dispute. It is difficult to justify a company with $1.3 billion in operating profit contesting a $10,000 matter (about $66 per worker for 150 contract workers) rather than accepting the outcome. The core issue is the decision to exclude contract workers over such a trivial cost, and then aggressively defend that discrimination instead of correcting it.

While the company reportedly argued the gift was a discretionary CEO benefit, the union stated that treating a negotiated benefit as unilateral generosity reflects a tendency to view people as costs, not organizational members.

The union added this raises broader concerns about human rights and ESG credibility. Excluding workers based on employment status and fighting labor rulings is inconsistent with the company's publicly promoted ESG values. Furthermore, the union warned that management's pattern of making such irrational decisions is driving labor-management relations into a structural conflict. True ESG credibility requires workplace fairness and respect for human dignity.

Jaesung Park, President of the Samsung Biologics Labor Union, said, “The amount at issue may be small, but the discriminatory mindset revealed is not. Such repeated irrational decisions are destroying foundational trust and creating a structural crisis in our labor relations. What the company needs now is not a determination to fight a small cost to the end, but the common-sense decision to correct discrimination and treat people as members of the organization.”

A written judgment from the Labor Relations Commission confirming that Samsung Biologics discriminated against a fixed-term employee regarding holiday benefits.