Rock and pop
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Italian pop and rock has produced many stars including: Laura Pausini, Eros Ramazzotti, Mango, Max Pezzali, Biagio Antonacci, Antonello Venditti, Lucio Dalla, Lara Fabian, Tiziano Ferro, Anna Tatangelo, partially Salvatore Adamo and Pooh, Adriano Celentano, Mina, Andrea Bocelli and Elisa. Additionally, a popular singer is Viola Valentino. The modern style of pop music tends toward sentimental ballads with a crooning vocal style, though it previously had a blend of Mediterranean folk rhythms fused with pop forms. These folkier pop artists included Lucio Battisti, Vasco Rossi and Pino Daniele. Modern and young emerging artists falling within this genre who have acquired public success for their voices include Alessandra Amoroso, Malika Ayane, Emma, Arisa and Noemi to name a few.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Italian popular music changed by incorporating Latin American and Anglo musical traditions, especially Brazilian bossa nova, American and British rock and roll and even jazz. The same period saw diversification in the cinema of Italy, and Cinecittà films included complex scores by composers including Ennio Morricone, Armando Trovaioli, Piero Piccioni and Piero Umiliani. This film music remained popular in the 1970s, and then underwent a revival in the 1990s.
Italy was one of the leading nations of the progressive rock movement of the 1970s (the others being Germany and the United Kingdom), and its progressive scene was big, united and lively. The main Italian style of progressive rock was symphonic rock mixed with Italian folk music influences, e.g. Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Le Orme, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Pooh, Il Balletto di Bronzo. There were also some experimental rock bands around, such as Area. Progressive rock concerts were usually political events with an energetic atmosphere: Area's songs had mainly left-wing political lyrics.
Beginning in the 1980s, pop grew more heterogeneous and more in line with international sounds. Italian house music spawned Black Box, whose first single "Ride on Time" was an international hit, making the Top 10 in many countries and no 1 in the UK, becoming the UK's best-selling single of 1989. Zucchero is a leading Italian rock musician along with Luciano Ligabue and Vasco Rossi, whilst Jovanotti is a widely popular singer mixing elements of dance music with Italian popular music and rap. Other prominent rock bands include Litfiba.
In the 2000s, dance music group DB Boulevard with vocalist Moony, charted at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart in 2001, with their song "Point of View".[1] The video accompanying the song featured a computer-animated cardboard woman driving a cardboard car through a cardboard city. The song earned DB Boulevard the distinction of being the first Italian music group to be nominated at the MTV Europe Music Awards.