Toto Cutugno has died. Just turned 80 in July, the singer-songwriter died today around 4 pm at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan where he was hospitalized. His manager Danilo Mancuso gave the news to ANSA, explaining that ”after a long illness, the singer had gotten worse in recent months”.
Toto Cutugno, born on 7 July 1943, is the symbol of Italian melody abroad thanks to L’Italiano. Fifteen participations in the Sanremo festival (with a historic performance in 1990 paired with Ray Charles), author of hits also loved abroad, from L’Italiano to Il tempo se ne va, La mia musica, Solo noi, to name just a few, Cutugno was a true showman, capable of passing with extreme ease from songwriting to television hosting (in 1987 he was at the helm of a successful edition of ‘Domenica In’).
Tuscan but raised in Liguria, not yet twenty he founds a group, Toto and the Tati, proposing his songs live. 1975 is the year of great success in France and the following year there is the debut at the Sanremo festival: he takes the Ariston stage with his group, the Albatros, with ‘Flight AZ 504’. He comes third. Shortly afterwards ‘Nel cuore nei sensi’ arrives, with which he participates in the Festivalbar and which leaps to the top of the charts in the French version engraved by Gerard Lenorman. Cutugno, he also writes the first song for the great Adriano Celentano, Soli. A song that will remain at number one in the charts for months. For the debut album, ‘Voglio l’anima’, we will have to wait for 1979. But there are many successes of the national Toto: ‘Solo noi’ is launched in Sanremo in 1980, the year in which Cutugno signs all the songs on the album ‘ Time flies for Adriano Celentano. After the publication of ‘My Music, 1981.
In 2010, after a difficult period due to health reasons, he arrives in Sanremo with Belen Rodriguez, with whom he sings Aeroplani. In 2012, invited by Fabio Fazio, he performed L’Italiano with the choir of the Red Army. His bond with the festival is so strong that in 2005 he gave up the Olympia in Paris to participate. And, between one festival and another, Toto travels the world, never stands still, always faithful to his slogan: ”Let me sing with guitar in hand, let me sing, I’m an Italian”. In 2019, a case broke out in Ukraine: a group of Ukrainian deputies with a letter asked to preclude the entry of Toto Cutugno, who had a concert in Kiev sold out for some time, due to alleged pro-Russian positions. He replied that he was “surprised and worried”, always declaring himself distant from politics: “I am apolitical”. In 2021 he was happy to pass the baton to the Maneskin at Eurovision: he was in fact the winner of the European competition in 1990.
Read the full article on ANSA.it
2023-08-22 15:39:00
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