Do we like them?

Do we like Johnny Hallyday?

Our score: 6 out of 10. No campaigning for harm turned up and he has real fan love, but the record is thin and the family and tax stoushes are messy.

Johnny Hallyday, born Jean-Philippe Smet, died at 74 in December 2017. He was the man who brought rock 'n' roll to the French-speaking world, a kind of French Elvis. In France he wasn't just a singer, he was a national institution, and his death was treated like a national event.

The best-known political stoush was about money. In 2006 he announced a move to Switzerland, reportedly to cut his tax bill, and the French Socialists mocked then-presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy over it. Reports said Sarkozy did not disown him and promised lower tax rates to lure high earners home. After Sarkozy won in 2007, Hallyday's wife said they would return to France, citing that promised cap on taxes.

On the harm test, I searched his words and deeds on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants and the climate. I found no campaign, conspiracy theory or culture-war grift from him in the sources I could use. One thing he did say publicly was that, had he not been a singer, he would have taken up a weapon against jihadists after the 2015 Paris attacks. That is a statement about extremists, not about any group of ordinary people. Honest caveat: much of the French-language coverage didn't open for me, so this is a thin pass, not a glowing one.

Over the years he faced accusations that he denied. I couldn't open the original reports to check them, so I'm leaving the detail out rather than repeat something I can't properly source. That's why the good-person test comes out as mixed rather than pass.

On the good side, fans love him for a half-century of stadium shows and for the way he carried French rock. His last interview, given in 2017, has him saying he felt Belgian in Belgium and French in France, a nice nod to his roots. I couldn't verify much on specific charity work, so I won't oversell the saint angle.