Happy birthday Mina

Mina celebrates her 80th birthday on 25 March 2020. In honour of this important milestone, we’ve selected 80 of her songs that range across her career of over 60 years. This most loved and acclaimed Italian singer in fact began her recording adventure in 1958 when she was only 18, just after her improvised performance at the Bussola in Viareggio, where she was spending a holiday with her family. Since then, she’s been unstoppable, recording over 1,500 songs, 79 albums and 62 hit singles. Together with Celentano, she holds the Italian record for number of copies sold: 150 million, just 30 million less than the Beatles. Numbers aside, Mina Anna Maria Mazzini – her real name – holds a truly commanding place in the world of Italian music. The original timbre of her voice, her uncommon vocal range and her innovative gestural expressiveness immediately brought her to the forefront of the movement called the urlatori, (‘screamers’) which at the time was changing Italian music. Soon, though, she outgrew this genre, tied as it was to adolescent moods, to begin that journey which in a short period made her the singer adored by all generations. At the same time, she also mastered the business side of the field, to the point of being able to manage her own career. This long playlist (over four hours of music) represents an important summary of her production, from the rock ‘n’ roll tunes of her early career to the songs for TV and film, from American and Neapolitan evergreen hits to her many successful covers (in Spanish, English, French, German and Portuguese), from Beatles’ songs to those by Battisti, and, finally, some of her many duets: with Paolo Conte, Adriano Celentano, Fiorello, Lucio Dalla, Seal, Chico Buarque and, most recently, Ivano Fossati (2019).