Though North American rock fans may know her as Stephen Stills' '70s-era wife, Véronique Sanson was a game-changing force in her native France. Her dramatic 1972 piano ballad “Amoureuse” cast aside the coquettish ingenues of the '60s, introducing a bold, bracing voice that quavered with intensity. Though she sang in French, her music was more in tune with the exquisitely orchestrated soft rock of Laurel Canyon. Long after she split from Stills, Sanson found a more unlikely American fan—her early-'70s standard “Une Nuit Sur Son Epaule” was repurposed into JAY Z's 2008 track “History.”