Born on June 14: Gianna Nannini, the rebel of Italian rock

She was born in 1954 in the beautiful city of Siena in Tuscany (Italy) into a family of pastry chefs!

From childhood, rather than learning the recipe for "ricciarelli" (the delicious local cookie), she developed a passion for music. For seven years, she studied quite diligently at the conservatory, first in Lucca and then in Milan, before throwing it all away. While her younger brother was preparing to try his luck in Formula 1, Gianna distanced herself from her family and threw herself heart and soul into rock music. In Florence, not far from her hometown, the IRA label (meaning “anger”) was also beginning to kick against the established order.

In Italy, the “cansoneta” (with its obligatory catchy, catchy chorus) has always been all the rage. And not just in San Remo. But the singer would no doubt prefer us to forget her debut on "Un disco per l'estate" in 1974. She likely sees it as a youthful mistake.

By 1979, she had her first major hit with “America,” which caused a scandal because it was essentially a hymn to masturbation—both female and male, for that matter. On the album cover, the torch of the Statue of Liberty in New York was replaced by a vibrator in the colors of the American flag!

Throughout the 1980s, Gianna Nannini established herself as one of the most powerful and distinctive voices in Italian rock. Her album "Latin Lover" (1982) propelled her onto the international scene. She became extremely popular in Germany as well as in France. "Profumo" (1986) remains, to this day, her most popular album, featuring tracks such as "Bello e impossibile," even though France gave her second place on the Top 50 the following year thanks to "I Maschi"—a feat for an Italian-language song in the land of Voltaire. Moreover, as is often the case with Gianna Nannini, the deliberately ambiguous lyrics hover between a celebration and a critique of gender relations. For her part, she has never hidden her homosexuality. She lives with her partner Carla, whom she has known for 40 years, and they have a daughter together, Penelope, born in 2010. She dedicated "Io e te" to her.

Since her debut, the Italian singer has recorded an impressive number of albums—so many that we won’t even attempt to list them here. Her latest album, “Sei nel l’anima” (2024), is undoubtedly the most personal of her career. It marks a return to her first musical loves, while addressing intimate themes such as family and resilience. “I grew up with Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, and Etta James. They showed me how to sing. My father encouraged this American approach in my voice, but a few years later, the European sound became my identity. This album is like a return to the soul of my beginnings," she explains.

(Stéphane Massart - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Portrait of Gianna Nannini in Brussels (Belgium) in February 1987