11 Best Italian Happy Songs: Pure Joy From Italy

Hey, I’m TBone, and after two decades behind the decks I can tell you with absolute certainty that nobody does happy quite like the Italians. The 11 best Italian happy songs carry a kind of sunshine that cuts straight through language barriers and gets entire rooms moving before the first chorus even lands.

Quick Comparison Table

I’ve played sets everywhere from Ibiza beach clubs to a tiny wedding in Puglia, and I always keep a block of Italian happy songs ready to deploy when the vibe needs lifting. There’s a reason these tracks travel so effortlessly — the melodies are enormous, the rhythms are irresistible, and the emotion is completely unguarded.

What strikes me most about Italian pop is how unashamed it is about joy. While other genres dress happiness up in irony or understatement, Italian songwriters just go full throttle with it — a shimmering chord change here, a soaring tenor note there, and suddenly you’re grinning like a kid whether you understand a single word or not.

This list pulls from six decades of Italian music, from the golden era of canzone italiana right through to the modern indie-pop wave that’s been quietly blowing up streaming charts across Europe. I’ve ordered these from most globally recognised down to the cult favourites, so you can dip in anywhere depending on your crowd.

Table of Contents

1. Volare — Dean Martin

2. Azzurro — Adriano Celentano

3. Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu — Domenico Modugno

4. Felicità — Al Bano & Romina Power

5. L’Italiano — Toto Cutugno

6. Figli delle stelle — Alan Sorrenti

7. O Sole Mio — Luciano Pavarotti

8. Torneró — I Santo California

9. Parole Parole — Mina & Alberto Lupo

10. Ciao Ciao — La Rappresentante di Lista

11. Musica Leggerissima — Colapesce e Dimartino

List Of Italian Happy Songs

1. Volare — Dean Martin

🎯 Why this made the list: The most recognised Italian-flavoured song on the planet, and still the fastest way to turn a hesitant crowd into a dancing one.

📅 1958 · 🎵 Classic Pop/Big Band · ▶️ 28M views · 🎧 85M streams

Volare was originally written by Domenico Modugno and Franco Migliacci under its full title Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu, but it was Dean Martin’s 1958 swinging big-band version that conquered the English-speaking world and made the song a permanent fixture of popular culture. Martin recorded it during his Capitol Records peak, wrapping Modugno’s dreamy Italian imagery in the kind of lush orchestration that Las Vegas was built on. The word volare simply means “to fly,” and you can feel that weightlessness in every bar.

Musically, the track opens with that instantly recognisable brass fanfare before settling into a loose, samba-inflected swing groove. Martin’s vocal phrasing is effortlessly joyful — he sounds like a man who genuinely can’t believe how good life is, and that feeling is completely contagious. The key modulation heading into the final chorus is pure euphoria engineering.

I first dropped this track at a corporate event in Milan back in 2007 when the room was completely dead, and I watched 200 Italian executives abandon their awkwardness and start swaying within about eight seconds. That moment told me everything I needed to know about the universal power of this song. It lives permanently in my “emergency happiness” folder.

Volare won two Grammy Awards in 1959, including Record of the Year, and reached number one in multiple countries. It has been covered over 500 times by artists ranging from Pavarotti to David Bowie, cementing its status as the defining Italian-American crossover hit of the 20th century.

2. Azzurro — Adriano Celentano

🎯 Why this made the list: The quintessential Italian summer song — three minutes of pure, uncomplicated joy that has never aged a single day.

📅 1968 · 🎵 Italian Pop/Beat · ▶️ 45M views · 🎧 62M streams

Released in 1968, Azzurro [Blue] was written by Paolo Conte — yes, that Paolo Conte — and became the signature song of Adriano Celentano, Italy’s undisputed king of rock-and-roll pop. Celentano had already been a star for a decade by this point, but Azzurro elevated him to a completely different cultural level. The song paints a vivid picture of a young man bored and restless on a hot Italian summer afternoon, longing for his absent lover — and somehow makes that bittersweet feeling sound like the most joyful thing in the world.

The arrangement is deceptively simple: a driving acoustic guitar groove, a piercing woodwind hook, and one of the most immediately recognisable chorus melodies in European pop history. Celentano’s voice has this wonderfully rough, unpretentious quality that gives the song an earthy warmth. Paolo Conte’s writing is, as always, cinematically precise — you can practically smell the hot tarmac and taste the gelato.

I’ve used Azzurro as a midday-set mood-setter at open-air events in Italy and it’s remarkable how it works on every generation simultaneously. Nonnas sing along with their teenage grandchildren without any self-consciousness whatsoever. That kind of cross-generational appeal is something I chase in my programming constantly, and this track delivers it every single time.

The song reached number one in Italy and became a massive hit across continental Europe. It remains one of the most-played Italian songs of all time on Italian radio, and in 2018 — fifty years after its release — it was voted the most beloved Italian song of the 20th century in a nationwide poll. That’s not nostalgia. That’s a genuinely perfect song.

3. Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu — Domenico Modugno

🎯 Why this made the list: The original Volare in all its full Italian glory — a song that literally invented the modern Eurovision era and changed pop music forever.

📅 1958 · 🎵 Canzone Italiana/Pop · ▶️ 35M views · 🎧 55M streams

While Dean Martin’s version gets more airplay in English-speaking countries, Domenico Modugno’s original 1958 recording is a completely different and, I’d argue, more emotionally complete experience. Modugno premiered Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu [In the Blue Painted Blue] at the Sanremo Music Festival that year, and the performance was so electrifying — he actually threw his arms wide open on stage, a revolutionary act of physical expression for Italian TV at the time — that it won the festival and then went on to win Eurovision. The song went on to sell over 22 million copies worldwide.

Musically, Modugno’s version has a more theatrical, sweeping quality than Martin’s swinging arrangement. The verse builds with quiet, almost mysterious piano, before the chorus explodes upward into that soaring “volare” melody. Modugno was a trained actor and it shows — the way he inhabits the lyric, the story of a man who dreams he has painted himself the colour of the sky and is flying free, is genuinely moving. This is happy music with real emotional depth underneath it.

The first time I heard Modugno’s original on an old vinyl in a record shop in Naples, I stood frozen in the aisle for the entire three minutes. There’s a kind of raw Italian soul in that recording that no cover version — not even Martin’s brilliant one — has ever fully replicated. I always make a point of playing the original when I want to give an Italian audience something that feels truly theirs.

This song holds a historic place in pop music: it was the first non-English-language song to reach number one on the American Billboard Hot 100, staying there for five weeks in 1958. It won two Grammy Awards and essentially opened the door for international music on the American charts. Modugno changed the rules of the game with this recording, and the joy in it remains completely intact today.

4. Felicità — Al Bano & Romina Power

🎯 Why this made the list: A title that literally means “happiness,” performed by Italy’s most beloved duo — this track is joyful pop perfection.

📅 1982 · 🎵 Eurodance Pop/Schlager · ▶️ 120M views · 🎧 78M streams

Felicità [Happiness] was released in 1982 as the title track of Al Bano and Romina Power’s album, and it became one of the best-selling Italian singles of the early 1980s across Europe and beyond. Al Bano Carrisi, the son of a Puglian farmer, and Romina Power, the American-born daughter of actor Tyrone Power, were Italy’s golden couple — both in music and in life — and the warmth of their real relationship radiates through every second of this recording.

The production is perfectly of its era: warm analogue synthesizers, a bouncing bass line, and a chorus so catchy it feels almost engineered by scientists. What elevates it beyond standard Eurodisco fare is the interplay between Al Bano’s powerful, almost operatic tenor and Romina’s lighter, airier voice. The song builds with an almost childlike delight, and the final chorus feels like the musical equivalent of throwing your arms open on a hilltop in the Tuscan sunshine.

I’ve dropped Felicità at the end of wedding sets more times than I can count, and it never fails to get every single person — from the grandparents to the kids who’ve never heard it before — on the floor. There’s a generosity to this song, a genuine warmth, that I find really rare in pop music. It’s the kind of track that makes people feel like everything is going to be okay.

The song topped the charts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Belgium, becoming a massive Schlager hit across continental Europe. In East Germany, it was reportedly one of the most popular Western songs ever played. Decades later, a viral meme in the 2010s introduced Felicità to an entirely new generation of young fans online, racking up hundreds of millions of views and proving that real joy is truly timeless.

5. L’Italiano — Toto Cutugno

🎯 Why this made the list: The proudest, happiest celebration of Italian identity ever put to music — an anthem that makes every Italian in the room stand two inches taller.

📅 1983 · 🎵 Folk Pop/Canzone Italiana · ▶️ 85M views · 🎧 45M streams

Toto Cutugno released L’Italiano [The Italian] in 1983, and it immediately became one of those rare songs that a whole nation adopts as a second national anthem. The lyrics are a warm, affectionate portrait of Italian life — espresso in the morning, love, passion, the Mediterranean sun, family — delivered with a kind of swaggering tenderness that only Cutugno could pull off. He had already had massive success at Sanremo, but this was the song that made him a European institution.

The arrangement rides on a mid-tempo groove with an acoustic guitar backbone, swelling strings, and one of those triumphant horn lines that makes you want to pump your fist. The chorus — “Lasciatemi cantare, con la chitarra in mano” [Let me sing, guitar in hand] — is an irresistible singalong that audiences grab hold of within seconds of hearing it. Cutugno’s voice has the quality of a man who has genuinely lived every word he is singing.

Playing this at a festival in Rome in 2015 was one of my favourite DJ moments ever. The crowd — thousands of people — just erupted. Not in a frantic, high-energy way, but in this deep, joyful, communal way that is completely unique to this song. Everyone knew every word, everyone was smiling, and for about four minutes the whole city seemed to be singing together. I get chills just thinking about it.

L’Italiano was a massive hit across Europe and remains one of the most recognised Italian songs internationally. In Russia especially, it achieved legendary status and is still played at national events decades later. Cutugno went on to win Eurovision in 1990 with Insieme: 1992, but L’Italiano is the song that will define his legacy — a joyful, generous celebration of a culture and a way of life.

6. Figli delle stelle — Alan Sorrenti

🎯 Why this made the list: Italy’s answer to disco euphoria — a dancefloor gem that sounds like the best night of your life distilled into four minutes.

📅 1977 · 🎵 Italo Disco/Pop · ▶️ 18M views · 🎧 30M streams

Alan Sorrenti released Figli delle stelle [Children of the Stars] in 1977, and it was a revelatory moment for Italian pop. Sorrenti had previously been known as a progressive rock and art-pop artist — his early albums were genuinely experimental — but this disco-influenced production, created with arranger Celso Valli, showed that Italian pop could compete with anything coming out of New York or London. The song became the biggest Italian hit of 1977 and introduced the country to a new era of dancefloor-ready pop.

The production is extraordinary for its time: lush string arrangements, a propulsive four-on-the-floor groove, glittering synthesizers, and Sorrenti’s soaring falsetto riding over the top of it all. The bridge builds with an almost unbearable sense of anticipation before releasing into that final chorus in a way that is pure DJ gold. This is a song that understands the mechanics of joy on the dancefloor at a deep structural level.

I discovered Figli delle stelle in a crate of Italian vinyl I bought from a retiring DJ in Florence, and the moment I played it through my studio monitors I knew I was holding something special. I dropped it at a rooftop party in Positano a few months later and the reaction was instantaneous — people who had never heard it looked up from their conversations with wide eyes and started moving. That’s the power of a truly great production.

The song reached number one in Italy and was a significant hit across Europe. It has been sampled and interpolated numerous times in the decades since, and its influence on the Italo disco genre — which would become a global phenomenon in the early 1980s — is enormous. Producers from Giorgio Moroder to modern electronic artists cite this era of Italian production as a foundational influence.

7. O Sole Mio — Luciano Pavarotti

🎯 Why this made the list: When the world’s greatest tenor sings the world’s most famous Italian song, the result is simply the most purely joyful three minutes in recorded music history.

📅 1990 · 🎵 Neapolitan/Opera-Pop · ▶️ 55M views · 🎧 40M streams

O Sole Mio [My Sunshine] is a Neapolitan song written in 1898 with music by Eduardo di Capua and words by Giovanni Capurro, and it has been recorded hundreds of times. But Pavarotti’s 1990 recording — released as part of his The Essential Pavarotti collection — is the definitive version for my money. It captures the Big Man at the absolute height of his powers, with a voice so warm and powerful it feels like the sun itself has decided to sing at you.

The song is, on paper, a simple love lyric comparing the beauty of the beloved’s face to the brightness of the sun — “O sole mio sta ‘nfronte a te” [My sunshine is your face]. But the melody, particularly that massive sustained high note on the climax, transforms it into something that feels genuinely transcendent. Pavarotti understood joy as a physical force, and he delivers it here like a gift.

I’m not a classical DJ by trade, but I’ve used the Pavarotti O Sole Mio as a room-silencing moment at the right events, and it never fails to work. There’s a magic to hearing that voice fill a space — even over PA speakers, even at a party — that stops people in their tracks. I dropped it once at a beach event in Sardinia as the sun was going down and I honestly thought some people were going to cry from pure happiness.

Pavarotti’s recording contributed to his Three Tenors era dominance, a period when classical music crossed over into pop culture in a way that had never happened before. His 1990 concert in Hyde Park drew 100,000 people, and his version of O Sole Mio was used in major advertising campaigns worldwide, including a famous British ice cream ad that made the song synonymous with summer joy for an entire generation.

8. Torneró — I Santo California

🎯 Why this made the list: The warmest, sunniest piece of Italian soft rock ever recorded — a hidden gem that makes every listener smile before the first verse is done.

📅 1975 · 🎵 Soft Rock/Italian Pop · ▶️ 12M views · 🎧 18M streams

I Santo California were a Calabrian duo — Roberto Cenci and Gabriella Morelli — who hit massive with Torneró [I Will Return] in 1975. The song is a breezy, effortlessly catchy piece of Italian soft rock that was inspired by the California sound of acts like The Mamas & the Papas and Bread, filtered through a distinctly Mediterranean warmth. It shot to number one in Italy and became one of the surprise pop hits of the mid-70s.

The production has a beautiful golden-hour quality: jangly acoustic guitars, light percussion, soft harmonies, and a melody so melodically generous it feels almost excessive in the best possible way. The interplay between the male and female voices gives the song a conversational warmth — it sounds like a happy couple singing to each other on a summer afternoon, which is more or less exactly what it is. There’s not a dark note anywhere in this recording.

I stumbled onto Torneró during a deep dive into Italian 70s pop a few years back, and it became one of those tracks I genuinely couldn’t stop playing. I’ve used it in beach bar sets, afternoon wedding receptions, and even as a cheeky wildcard in late-night sets when I want to change the energy. It always lands with a big smile — even from people who have absolutely no idea what they’re listening to.

The song spent several weeks at number one in Italy and was a significant hit across Europe. It has enjoyed periodic revivals and has been used in Italian television and advertising, keeping it in the cultural consciousness for nearly fifty years. Among collectors of Italian vintage pop, Torneró is considered an essential record — one of those songs that perfectly captures a particular moment of uncomplicated Italian joy.

9. Parole Parole — Mina & Alberto Lupo

🎯 Why this made the list: The most effortlessly stylish Italian happy song ever recorded — pure lounge sophistication that somehow still swings like a dream.

📅 1972 · 🎵 Lounge Pop/Canzone Italiana · ▶️ 22M views · 🎧 35M streams

Parole Parole [Words, Words] was released in 1972 as a duet between Mina — Italy’s greatest ever female vocalist, full stop — and the actor Alberto Lupo. The song is built on a wonderful dramatic irony: Lupo delivers flowery, overblown declarations of love in a smooth spoken-word baritone, while Mina responds with increasingly amused, affectionate dismissal — “Parole, parole, parole” — essentially calling him out for being all talk. It is charming, witty, and completely delightful.

Mina’s voice on this recording is simply astonishing. She moves from playful to tender to outright teasing within a single phrase, and her control is absolute. The arrangement — all bossa nova-inflected guitars, light percussion, and cool woodwinds — gives the song a breezy sophistication that never tips into stuffiness. This is the sound of Italian glamour at its most self-aware and self-assured.

As a DJ who loves building mood rather than just serving beats, Parole Parole is one of my most treasured tools. I use it during cocktail hours and early-evening sets to establish a sense of elegance and warmth. The reaction is always the same — people tilt their heads, smile, and ask me what on earth that beautiful thing was. It’s a perfect gateway drug into the world of classic Italian pop.

The song was a massive hit in Italy and across Europe, and it has enjoyed numerous revivals and covers — most notably by Dalida and Alain Delon, whose French version became a hit in its own right. The original Italian recording remains the definitive version, and in 2021 it found a whole new audience when it went viral on TikTok, racking up millions of views and introducing the magic of Mina to an entirely new generation.

10. Ciao Ciao — La Rappresentante di Lista

🎯 Why this made the list: The most irresistibly infectious Italian happy song of the 21st century — a Sanremo explosion that took over European radio overnight.

📅 2022 · 🎵 Indie Pop/Electropop · ▶️ 42M views · 🎧 95M streams

La Rappresentante di Lista — the project of Veronica Lucchesi and Dario Mangiaracina — stormed the 2022 Sanremo Music Festival with Ciao Ciao [Bye Bye], a frenetic, glittering, almost maniacally joyful piece of indie pop that sent the internet into an immediate frenzy. The song is ostensibly about saying goodbye, but the energy is so euphorically high that it feels like the most celebratory farewell in human history. Their performance — theatrical, colourful, completely committed — became one of the most talked-about Sanremo moments in years.

The production is a masterclass in controlled chaos: pounding electronic drums, stabbing synths, a chopped vocal loop that is physically impossible to shake from your memory, and that soaring chorus that seems to expand in all directions simultaneously. Lucchesi’s voice is extraordinary — powerful, theatrical, unhinged in the very best way. This is music that demands a physical response from your body and will not accept a refusal.

When Ciao Ciao came out I was immediately obsessed. I played it in a club set in Berlin the week it came out, mixing it between some heavy-hitting house tracks, and the reaction was wild — people stopped and looked at each other like “what is this?!” before fully losing their minds to it. It’s the kind of track that makes you proud to love music, because it reminds you of what pop music can do when artists go all in.

The song finished third at Sanremo but topped the Italian airplay charts and became one of the most streamed Italian songs of 2022. It received enormous coverage across European music media and represented a new wave of Italian indie-pop artists who are combining the theatrical tradition of canzone italiana with contemporary electronic production. La Rappresentante di Lista are the future of Italian happy music, and Ciao Ciao is their manifesto.

11. Musica Leggerissima — Colapesce e Dimartino

🎯 Why this made the list: Proof that Italian indie pop is having the most exciting moment in decades — a perfectly constructed slice of breezy, melancholy-tinged joy.

📅 2021 · 🎵 Indie Pop/Cantautorato · ▶️ 28M views · 🎧 110M streams

Colapesce e Dimartino — the duo of Lorenzo Urciullo (Colapesce) and Antonio Di Martino — released Musica Leggerissima [Very Light Music] at the 2021 Sanremo Festival and triggered one of the most remarkable cultural moments in recent Italian pop history. The song arrived during a genuinely difficult period — Italy had been through the worst of the COVID pandemic — and its combination of melancholy self-awareness and irresistible lightness felt like exactly what the country needed. It didn’t win Sanremo but it won the hearts of an entire generation.

The production sits somewhere between 1970s Italian cantautorato and contemporary indie pop — acoustic guitar, light electronic touches, and a melody of almost absurd elegance. The lyric is beautifully meta: a songwriter singing about the desire to write something light and beautiful during heavy times. “Vorrei scrivere musica leggerissima” [I’d like to write very light music] — and then they go ahead and do exactly that. It is the most perfectly self-fulfilling song concept I’ve encountered in years.

I have a very personal connection to this song. I was DJing a small outdoor event in Sicily in the summer of 2021 — the first outdoor event after the long lockdowns — and I dropped Musica Leggerissima as the sun was going down. The crowd went completely quiet and then erupted. There were people crying. It captured something that was very real in that moment — the joy of being alive and together again, the relief of being able to simply feel light.

The song became a genuine cultural phenomenon in Italy, reaching multi-platinum status and topping charts for months. It brought Colapesce e Dimartino — who had been respected indie artists for years but not household names — to a mainstream audience of millions. The song has been streamed over 110 million times on Spotify alone, making it one of the most successful Italian-language songs of the digital era. It announced, loudly and beautifully, that Italian songwriting is alive, innovative, and full of joy.

Fun Facts: Italian Happy Songs

Volare — Dean Martin

Two Grammys in one night: Dean Martin’s Volare won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1959 Grammy Awards, making it the first non-American-written song to sweep those categories.

Azzurro — Adriano Celentano

Written by a wine merchant’s son: Paolo Conte, who wrote Azzurro, was a lawyer and amateur musician when he penned the song — he hadn’t yet become the revered singer-songwriter we know today.

Nel Blu Dipinto di Blu — Domenico Modugno

First foreign number one in America: Modugno’s Volare was the first non-English-language song to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, spending five weeks at number one in the summer of 1958.

Felicità — Al Bano & Romina Power

Soviet bloc sensation: Felicità became one of the most popular Western pop songs ever played in East Germany and across the Soviet bloc, circulating on bootleg tapes throughout the 1980s.

L’Italiano — Toto Cutugno

A second anthem in Russia: L’Italiano is so beloved in Russia that it is regularly played at sporting events and national celebrations — some surveys have suggested Russians recognise it more readily than many Russian pop songs.

Figli delle stelle — Alan Sorrenti

A prog-rocker’s disco pivot: Before Figli delle stelle, Sorrenti was known for avant-garde progressive rock albums influenced by Robert Wyatt — his switch to disco pop was considered a shocking commercial sellout by critics, until the song sold millions.

O Sole Mio — Luciano Pavarotti

The ice cream connection: Pavarotti’s recording of O Sole Mio was used in a famous British ice cream advertisement for Wall’s Cornetto, making the phrase “Just one Cornetto” — sung to the O Sole Mio melody — one of the most recognised advertising jingles in UK history.

Torneró — I Santo California

Named after a dream: The duo named themselves “I Santo California” as a tribute to the California sound they loved, despite having grown up in Calabria in the deep south of Italy — about as far from California as you can get.

Parole Parole — Mina & Alberto Lupo

TikTok time machine: In 2021 — nearly fifty years after its release — Parole Parole went viral on TikTok, with millions of young users using the track for comedic duets that perfectly echoed the original song’s dynamic.

Ciao Ciao — La Rappresentante di Lista

A costume that took over the internet: La Rappresentante di Lista’s performance costumes at Sanremo 2022 — featuring elaborate geometric shapes and mirrored elements — went viral independently of the music, with fashion accounts dedicating entire features to the look.

Musica Leggerissima — Colapesce e Dimartino

The pandemic song that healed: Musica Leggerissima was written and recorded during the COVID lockdowns and was explicitly conceived as an antidote to heaviness — the duo have said in interviews that writing it was a form of emotional survival during a very dark period.

These songs represent the full, beautiful range of what Italian happy music can be — from Neapolitan sunshine to disco dancefloors, from elegant lounge pop to frenetic indie chaos. If this list has done its job, your Spotify queue should be looking significantly more joyful right now. Trust me on this one — once you go Italian happy, you don’t go back.

— TBone, leveltunes.com

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most popular Italian happy song of all time?

Based on global recognition, cultural impact, and sheer longevity, Volare — in either Domenico Modugno’s original or Dean Martin’s version — is almost certainly the most popular Italian happy song of all time. It has sold over 22 million copies worldwide, won multiple Grammy Awards, and been covered by everyone from Pavarotti to David Bowie. Over sixty years after its release, it still gets rooms singing along in about fifteen different countries.

What makes a great Italian happy song?

From my experience, the best Italian happy songs share a few key qualities: a melody of generous, almost overwhelming warmth; a sense of emotional directness that never feels embarrassing; and a rhythm that makes physical stillness essentially impossible. Italian songwriting has a tradition of going full throttle on feeling — there’s no coolness for coolness’s sake — and that unguarded emotional commitment is what makes these songs travel so well across cultures and languages.

Where can I listen to Italian happy songs?

All eleven songs on this list are available on Spotify — search for playlists like “Italian Pop Classics,” “Sanremo Hits,” or “Italo Disco” to find your rabbit hole. YouTube is brilliant for this music too, particularly for the older recordings where official VEVO channels have uploaded remastered versions. If you ever get the chance to hear this music live in Italy — at a village festival, a beach club, or even just a trattoria with a good stereo — take it without hesitation.

Who are the most famous Italian happy artists?

The Mount Rushmore of Italian happy music would have to include Adriano Celentano, Mina, Al Bano, and Domenico Modugno from the classic era. For the disco and 80s era, Alan Sorrenti and Toto Cutugno are essential. In the modern era, La Rappresentante di Lista and Colapesce e Dimartino are leading a thrilling new wave of Italian indie pop that is winning fans across Europe. Any playlist built around these artists is going to make people very happy indeed.

Is Italian happy music popular outside Italy?

Enormously so, and in some surprising places. German-speaking Europe has always had a huge appetite for Italian pop, particularly the Schlager-influenced work of Al Bano & Romina Power and Toto Cutugno. Russia and Eastern Europe have a deep love for classic Italian pop that dates back to bootleg tapes circulating during the Cold War. And globally, the viral spread of songs like Parole Parole and Musica Leggerissima on platforms like TikTok is introducing a whole new generation to the Italian pop tradition. Joy, it turns out, is the most universal language there is.