Music trend: Tort of longing Italy: Italo strikers are trendy

Once smiled at as a holiday sound, today it ensures sold-out halls: the Italo hit is experiencing a renaissance. It fills arenas, stands in the charts and trudges on social media. Between ironic distance and real enthusiasm, he celebrates a generation that knows his heyday only from stories.

He even shapes pictures online: Countless clips appear under the hashtag #italovibes. Italy appears in it as a flawless backdrop: sights, aperitivo scenes, postcard romance. At the latest since the Eurovision Song Contest 2025, a line has also been burned into the collective ear: “Mi Amore, Espresso Macchiato per favorite”. The Este Tommy Cash, espresso cup in hand, sang from pasta and mafia and landed a viral hit with this overdose cliché.

Lake Garda in the head, retrofluche in the ear

For Eric Pfeil, who landed a bestseller with his book over a hundred classics of the Italo pop (“Azzurro”) and the many stories around it, there is a recurring pattern: “This is Italy with support wheels, Italy with spacers, Italy with humor,” says the Cologne journalist of the German press agency.

Pfeil does not surprise that this sound continues to inspire people. The hit is the bluntest form of escapism. The Italian variant offers “innocent areas”: “You can no longer be reluctant to do your own culture, but you can imagine a Garda-like world of Italy,” said the author. It is a world of memories of beautiful vacation – “when everything was fine”.

Before the Italo sound on Tiktok became the background for aperol clips, it belonged to the big stage: the Sanremo Festival of the 1960s and 70s. This was followed by hits, such as Adriano Celentano with “Azzurro” or Umberto tozzi with “ti amo”. For German ears it was always a promise of sun, sea and vacation.

But the Italy of that time was not a perfect world. Political polarization, attacks and street fights shaped the country. The youth were looking for a way out – and found it in new sounds. At the end of the 70s, synthesizers moved in, productions became cheaper, Beats more international. Everyone could make music.

It was self -authorization – often with a playful silly, as the international hit “Boys, Boys, Boys” by Sabrina Salerno showed. The baptismal name “Italo Disco” comes from the German label boss Bernhard Mikulski, who published a compilation under this title at the end of the 70s.

At the end of the 80s, Italo disco lost radiance. What remained were small fan scenes and isolated DJ sets. And the longing holidaymaker who wanted to remember sunscreen and beach.

After the 2010s, the rediscovery came-first in niches, then in the meme culture with bright costumes and exaggerated facial expressions, perfect for the Internet. Today bands like Roy Bianco & Die Abbrunzati Boys or Crucchi Gang Hallen, streaming numbers go into the millions.

Pfeil sees more than just an algorithm effect: Even a young indie generation has a tendency to “want to flee very regressively into a safe world”. Music is always escapism, emphasizes Pfeil. Historian Tobias Becker also said the dpa: Nostalgia is not only a return into the past, but also criticism of the present. In times of crisis, recent decades seemed more stable, clearer, easier. The Italo sound provides exactly this feeling.

Musical tourist menu

But is Italy just a hit? Pfeil criticizes that German listeners often only served a “musical tourist menu”: “I want Lake Garda, I want to eat certain dishes there, I want my aperitivo, and everything doesn’t get too wild.” The current hype repeat many of these clichés, mostly characterized by international artists.

However, the future could bring a new form of longing – an Italy beyond the postcard motifs. “Italy is a country that has always had to do with crises. You could learn a lot of it,” says Pfeil. Until then, the Italo hype remains what it can do best: escapism, a touch of self-irony and a pinch of kitsch.