Laura Pausini and the Italian Canon: The Debate Over La solitudine

La solitudine turns 35 and continues to divide listeners

There is a paradox that repeats itself whenever the canon of Italian popular music comes up. La solitudine, the track with which Laura Pausini won the Sanremo Music Festival in 1993 at age 18, is considered a perfect piece by some fans, antiestéticaturing a final chorus many deem unbeatable. For others, it is merely teenage pop elevated by nostalgia. The debate isn't new but remains active: the question of whether a song from this genre can be "the best in Italian history" resurfaces every time the singer from Solarolo is championed.

The starting point is an uncomfortable thesis: if this same track had been signed by an Anglo-Saxon star, one school of thought argues, it would today be a global anthem. The interpreter's Italian identity would have limited its international reach. This is a counterfactual hypothesis, not data, but it explains why the conversation always drifts toward the same point: the weight of the Anglo-Saxon market versus continental Europe.

Laura Pausini, a career built outside the Anglo-Saxon circuit

Pausini is not an isolated case. Her career has developed almost entirely in Italian and Spanish, with occasional forays into the Anglo-Saxon market that were never central to her strategy. This has made her a massive figure in Europe and Latin America, yet relatively unknown in the United States and the UK. The asymmetry is real and measurable in terms of tours and media presence, though not necessarily in total sales.

The criticism leveled at her by certain sectors is having chosen commercial pop over singer-songwriter traditions. If she had leaned more toward an authorial style, some argue, her musical quality would have been even higher. This critique ignores a detail: Pausini's vocal quality is undisputed, even among those who dislike her repertoire. Her voice, they say, is exceptional.

Mina, Battisti, and the rest of the canon: fierce competition

The problem with declaring La solitudine the best Italian song is that the rest of the canon doesn't stand still. Mina, at 84, continues to release nearly an album a year since her retirement in Lugano, without concerts or public life. Her voice is, for many, the absolute ceiling of Italian popular music. Lucio Battisti always appears in these conversations, as does Franco Battiato and his gravitational center.

The list of names crossing paths in this discussion is long: Pupo, Sandro Giacobbe, I Pooh, Albano, Vasco Rossi with Liberi Liberi, Gigliola Cinquetti winning Eurovision at 17. Each has its defenders. The result is that the initial claim—La solitudine as the absolute peak—is sustained more as personal preference than consensus.

The final chorus as a technical argument

There is an argument that transcends taste: the structure of La solitudine. The last two minutes, with that rising and repeating chorus, function as a crescendo unusual in nineties pop. Those defending the track rely on this construction, not the lyrics. It is a technical, verifiable argument, and therefore withstands scrutiny better than nostalgia.

Personal anecdote also carries weight. Hearing that chorus on the radio while crossing Bologna's main square under rain is the kind of memory that turns a song into something more than just a song. That cannot be debated with data.

What happens when the canon is written by the Anglo-Saxons

The discussion inevitably derives toward a structural issue: who writes the canon. Italian music has produced a vast amount of material that never crossed the Atlantic with the force it deserved. Pausini's case is the most visible example, but not the only one. The open question remains whether global recognition is a valid measure of quality or merely market power.

With these elements, the dispute doesn't close. La solitudine will continue to be, for some, the best Italian song in history and for others, good pop with a memorable chorus. What admits no debate is that the conversation about the Italian canon remains monopolized by a question nobody fully answers: Who decides what is the best?