Hello again, ONTD!
We finally reached the final part in our discovery of tormentoni, and this time we will focus on the maschi.
But before I start, I just want to repeat a point I made in the first post. I’m planning on doing more posts about italian music, focusing on various genres so there will be some names that will not be under the spotlight in this post, although you might think they deserved it. But links to their songs will still be linked at the end under the highlights. So, let's start!
Cesare Cremonini - Gli Uomini e le Donne sono uguali
Here is a returning name! You might remember Cesare Cremonini as the leader of the group Lùnapop from the first post. As mentioned there, after the group split he continued working right away on his first solo album, and just as Squerez…. had been, Bagus was also a great album full of great singles, awarding him with four golden disks and over 250.000 sold copies. The very first single was called Gli Uomini e le Donne sono Uguali, you might see another familiar face because he continued working with Ballo, the bassist from his old group. He continued his career with great results, releasing 6 studio albums so far, 2 live albums and 3 collection albums.
Other songs:PadreMadre - Il Comico - Marmellata #25
Jovanotti - Un raggio di Sole/Per te/L’ombelico del mondo
Ah, here we go back to italian hip hop. Lorenzo Cherubini aka Jovanotti started his career back in the 80s and… he has been a steady part in the italian charts since then. Despite starting his career as a hip hop artist, sometimes he would also release singles with pretty and sweet melodies that sadly he rarely manages to keep up with, but he is aware of it as is pretty much everyone else. The video above features a medley of hits from the 90s but those were not even close to the amount of singles he has released or even written for other artists.
Other songs: Serenata Rap - (Tanto)3 - Il più Grande Spettacolo dopo il Big Bang
Nek - Sei Grande
One of the names non-Italians might probably be aware of, Filippo Neviani aka Nek or as some people called him “The prettiest blue eyes in Italy”, started his career in a Police cover band, but he left them to focus on his solo career. He competed at the Sanremo Festival with the song Laura non c’è which despite not winning became a huge success outside of Italy as well, selling over 1.5 millions copies. But just because other of his songs did not sell that much worldwide, it does not mean his songs were bad. Sei Grande was released back in 1997 and as far as I can recall, the song was pretty famous but I can’t find any data about how much it sold. Still, his overall numbers are impressive since he released 15 studio albums since 1992, selling over 10 millions copies worldwide.
Other songs: Se io non avessi te - Ci sei Tu - Almeno Stavolta
Alex Britti - Mi piaci
Alex Britti is a songwriter from Rome and his beginnings are strictly connected with the blues music. In fact, he used to be the supporting act for names such as Buddy Miles and Billy Preston. As oftentimes happens, after he signed a record deal with a new label and making a switch towards pop music he suddenly found success with his first album It.Pop. He competed and won the new artist category at the 1999 Sanremo festival with the song Oggi sono io. If his first singles were more ballad-oriented, his second album was full of more upbeat songs, perfect for the summer (I mean, who would not love a song that talks about spending the whole day in the bathtub?). His following albums marked a return to more blues sounds, especially when he made a duet with Edoardo Bennato, another italian songwriter who also mainly performs blues music (yes, he will be discussed in a later post and if you watched the trailer for Luka, it featured a song by Bennato).
Other songs: Oggi sono io - La Vasca - 7000 caffè
DJ Francesco - La canzone del Capitano
And finally, the very last spotlight in the Festivalbar series, goes to Mister Francesco Facchinetti also known as DJ Francesco. Let me be blunt: he is the product of nepotism, and it shows. His father is Robi Facchinetti, a member of a legendary italian group called Pooh. Pooh had a song called Chi fermerà la musica? (Who will stop the music?). The answer is... DJ Francesco. The problem is that his music was so freaking catchy, that it was so good, and La Canzone del Capitano remains the most sold italian single of the 21st century. He had a bunch of other singles, most of them hits, his albums sold a lot, with the first one called Bella di Padella selling over 100 thousand copies. He also dubbed the voice of Rodney, from the movie Robots (and yes, he also sings the OST). After releasing three albums he decided for a career switch and decided to become a host (the results are to be discussed). I wanted to finish saying that thankfully, our ears have been spared since but wiki just informed me that he apparently released a song this year to celebrate the 50th birthday of Nesquick. I don’t even know.
Note: so, after writing this post I realized that I can’t find any video of him performing at Festivalbar, although I know he did it (heck, there are even photos of him there), so I had to use a clip of him performing at Top Of The Pops, sorry!
Other songs: Salta - Ridere Ridere - Francesca
Other songs:
Vasco Rossi - Rewind
Luciano Ligabue - Happy hour
Gianluca Grignani - L’Aiuola
Daniele Silvestri - Salirò
Pino Daniele - Neve al Sole
Raf - Infinito
Neffa - Io e la mia Signorina
Luca Dirisio - Calma e Sangue Freddo
Simone Tomassini - Il mondo che non c’è
Biagio Antonacci - Convivendo
Paolo Meneguzzi - Verofalso
Simone Cristicchi - Vorrei Cantare come Biagio
Pago - Parlo di te
I’m pretty sure I am missing some names so people who remember the tormentoni from those years, feel free to link them below.
Also, this is the last post about the summer hits, and as I mentioned before, I have other original posts about italian music planned but I don’t know when I will get around to make them - I don’t even know which one I will be writing and I’ll be busy in the next couple of weeks so I don’t want to make any promise (or as one of my favorite tormentone says, I suffer the stress). I hope you all enjoyed this brief introduction to italian music and hopefully, I’ll see you next time.