Part of the baby boom, he was the son of Bertrand Charles Delpech, a chrome metal plater and Christiane Cécile Marie Josselin, a housewife.

His father's ancestral home is in Sologne, more specifically in Dhuizon, where his hairdresser grandfather lived and also in La Ferté-Saint-Cyr, where his uncles and cousins worked as grocers, loggers and farmers.

His parents having moved to Cormeilles-en-Parisis in Seine-et-Oise (today known as Val-d’Oise), Jean-Michel Delpech studied at the Chabanne college and in the Pontoise’s Camille-Pissarro high school between 1961 and 1964.

As a teenager, he became passionate about famous classic singers like Luis Mariano, and then great names from the 1950s like Gilbert Bécaud and Charles Aznavour.

As Jacques Prévert and as a tribute to the poetry, he compiles in the verse of the music, a list of news such as the Vietnam War, the miniskirt, the Courrèges boots, the Cacharel trend, the flower shirts, etc.

In 1967, Johnny Stark, Mireille Mathieu’s manager takes Michel Delpech in charge and helps him to build up his star image.

As the opener of “La chanteuse d’Avignon”, he starts an international tour from West Germany, to USSR and United States.

In 1970, the singer leaves his manager Johnny Stark to benefit a much wider artistic liberty, and 2 years later, stops his collaboration with Rolland Vincent looking for other writers.

"On dirait que ça te gêne de marcher dans la boue, on dirait que ca te gêne de dîner avec nous" (Looks like you don’t want to walk in the mud, looks like you don’t want to have dinner with us) is an illustration of the sometime hard and difficult relationship between cities and country sides.

In 1965, he took part in the music comedy Copains Clopant that had a six-month run and made him popular, particularly through his interpretation of "Chez Laurette".

[2] In 1968, he won the "Grand Prix du Disque" award for "Il y a des jours où on ferait mieux de rester au lit".

The early 1970s brought separation from Johnny Stark for two years, and the end of the long collaboration with Roland Vincent, his first-ever writer.

Delpech had long been a heavy smoker, going through a pack of cigarettes daily starting at the age of 18 and quitting only after his diagnosis to throat cancer in 2013.