Italy took its well deserved third victory - finally! - at the Eurovision song contest 2021. Over the years several other Italian entries would have been worthy winners. In this series I will go through all of them from the worst ranking to the winners.
Umberto Tozzi (69) won Sanremo 1987 with Gianni Morandi and Enrico Ruggeri with Si puó dare di piú, co-written by Raf or Raffaele Riefoli. Morandi had already done Eurovision and Ruggeri would do it later so Tozzi took along Raf (in the beginning of his career spelled Raff) with another song they wrote together, Gente di mare. It also marked Raf's debut singing in Italian. They placed 3rd out of 22.
Umberto Tozzi is one of the most selling Italian artists abroad in the 1970's/1980's with songs like Gloria, Ti amo, Tu, Stella stai. Laura Branigan made both Ti amo and Gloria global hist in English. Over 80 million records sold he's still active today. Four Sanremos with that one victory, 17 studio albums and 60 singles so far.
Raf (61) started his career in English and the biggest hit was Self control, that became a global hit covered by..... Laura Branigan! Eurovision kickstarted his career in Italian and he started delivering big hits one after another, doing four Sanremos and Festivalbar and it all goes smooth until the late 1990's. 2015 he's ready for a big comeback in Sanremo but sadly he's hit my nasty bronchitis and he doesn't even reach the final. 2018-2019 he's back with Tozzi for a duet and a tour. Thirteeen studio albums, 60 singles so far, the latest being again a minor hit, Liberi (with Danti and Rovazzi).
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