Michel Delpech

Michel Delpech (1946-2016), a popular singer with a long list of hits, experienced fame, a decline in popularity and an astonishing comeback, all the while remaining the same man. Between the yéyé wave and the chanson d'auteur, he created a repertoire imbued with nostalgia and social chronicles, which won him the affection of a wide public as early as the 1960s with the songs "Chez Laurette" and "Wight Is Wight". His fame grew in the following decade, when he established himself as one of the great stars of French variety, with a series of hits with very different themes, such as "Pour un flirt", "Que Marianne était jolie" and " Les Divorcés", and, in 1974, "Le Chasseur" and, in 1977, "Le Loir-et-Cher", which celebrated rural France in the age of modernity. After the premonitory "Quand j'étais chanteur" (1976) and the album of Anglo-Saxon adaptations 5000 Kilomètres (1979), his style fell out of favor with the public, and he sank into a long depression. His comeback came in fits and starts with "Loin d'ici" (1984), followed by the thematic album Les Voix du Brésil (1991), but it wasn't until 2004 that he was rehabilitated by the new generation. The album of duets Michel Delpech & ... (2006) marked the singer's return to favor, as he found his salvation in religion. Concerts and a final album, Sexa (2009), enabled him to reconnect with the public before his battle with cancer, which claimed his life on January 2, 2016, at the age of 69.