Summer Hits in the Italo Disco Era

At the height of summer, an overview of Italian summer or summer-themed songs.

If you are ever curious about Italian popular music, one concept you need to grasp is the whole idea of “tormentone estivo.” Translating as “summertime earworm,” it is, plainly, a song that gets widespread air and playtime across channels, be it radio, clubs, summer resorts, and, now, social media. 

Tormentoni have been known as such in Italy since the 1960s, with performers like Edoardo Vianello dominating the scene at the time with “Abbronzatissima,” “Guarda come dondolo,” “I Watussi.” Songs like “Azzurro” by Adriano Celentano and “Acqua azzurra, acqua chiara” by Lucio Battisti  do portray a summertime scenery, but they also became synonymous with Italian summers in a specific point in time across the continent. 

This touches on Italian disco, Italo disco, and synth performers in that many of them had at least one tormentone under their belt. Sometimes, said tormentoni eclipsed all their other hits  and critic favorites in their repertoire, leading mainstream audiences to perceive said artists as one-trick ponies. 

In Italy, “Maracaibo” is a year-round karaoke and summertime anthem, sung by Lu Colombo. Most people only know Colombo for that song, but she had actually made a mark in the Italo disco and synth music scene with the retro-flavored “Dance All Nite,” which won the 1983 edition of the show “Un disco per l’estate,” the Italo disco “Aurora”  and the midtempo dreamlike synth “Rimini Ouagadogou”: sure, most of these songs do have an element of escapism—Aurora literally sings about exploring and seafaring—so one might wonder why “Maracaibo” made a mark over these other songs. 

Giuni Russo is another emblematic case. While, artistically, she experimented with genres, worldwide music traditions, opera, and even sacred music, to the non initiated she is the voice behind summer hits such as the cheeky “Alghero,”  “Un’estate al mare” (a summer at the seaside), “Abbronzate dai Miraggi”, “Limonata  cha cha cha,” which written just to appease their producer, the wistful “Mediterranea”.

On the disco front, she had a shapeshifting and eclectic career, and there was even a time when she went by Junie, when she posed as an Italian American disco diva to give her disco-inflected anthem “Che Mi Succede Adesso” an international flavor. She also wrote for Amanda Lear and penned the hits “Shiver” and “Music in Love” for the French disco singer Marie Laure Sachs. Some of her most memorable songs sample religious poetry and liturgy: consider “La sua figura,” which elaborates a poem by San Giovanni della Croce, or “Moro perché non moro,” which adapts a text by Saint Teresa of Avila into a contemporary song.

Veterans like Marcella Bella, who pioneered the funk/soul sound that would evolve into disco as early as 1973 produced a few summertime hits: “Resta Cu’mme,” which is the disco adaptation of the Neapolitan song of the same name. In 1983, she went for a radical rebrand, harnessing a sexier image. “Nell’aria,” (in the air) the lead single of the album of the same name, premiered at the 1983 edition of Festivalbar. It contains sexual innuendo and is the embodiment of the idea of yearning, and its explicit lyrics, coupled with its languid rhythm and melody, contributed to turning it into the ultimate song of the summer.

On the Italo disco front, Righeira achieved mainstream success with “Vamos a la playa,” whose melody was composed by Italo Disco pioneers La Bionda. Sung in Spanish, it has borderline nonsensical lyrics that, in passing, sound vague enough to evoke the atmosphere of summertime, but they actually depict a post-nuclear summer—Italy was displaying full-on nuclear-energy phobia, so the song is tied to that general mood.

Similarly, “Tropicana” by Gruppo Italiano describes people dancing at night, on an island while on vacation, but, at the height of it, boom goes a nuclear (or at least volcanic) explosion, which can guarantee an atomic suntan: the revelers remain oblivious. It should be noted, though, that Righeira had other successes under their belt, namely “No Tengo Dinero,” and “L’Estate Sta Finendo.” Ivana Spagna’s Easy Lady and Sabrina Salerno’s BOYS are also part of the canon.

This did not elude Even heavy hitters like Franco Battiato, a frequent collaborator of Giuni Russo and someone whose influences ranged from esotericism and philosophy to religion and who, over his 50-year-long career, experimented with  opera, prog rock, experimental pop, and many other genres. 

His 1981 album La Voce del Padrone contains summer-hit-inflected tracks. Consider “Centro di gravità permanente,” which is pretty much dance floor-ready, “Cucurrucucu Paloma,” which combines dance-inflected rhythms with hints to the Tomas Mendez song of the same name made popular by Harry Belafonte, and “Summer on a solitary beach,” which is a quiet subversion of the summer-hit trope in that it envisions the locale it’s set in as a metaphysical space, and contains the wish to just become one with the sea.