Elisa

Italian vocalist and composer Elisa cultivated a sound that fused the raw edges of 1990s alternative rock with a polished adult-alternative polish tailored to her warm, articulate delivery. Her first collection, 1997’s Pipes & Flowers, reached the Top Ten at home in Italy, and she maintained steady chart visibility in the years that followed. The 2003 single “Almeno Tu Nell’universo” claimed the top of the singles tally, while Heart became her initial number-one album domestically in 2009; the all-Italian-language L’Anima Vola repeated that summit position in 2013, as did the dance-pop-leaning On three years later.

Elisa Toffoli entered the world in Trieste in 1977 and developed an early passion for music, devoting countless childhood hours to singing along with recordings by artists as varied as Aretha Franklin, Ozzy Osbourne, Liza Minnelli, Ray Charles, and Madonna. Before reaching her teens she began guitar lessons that allowed her to accompany her own performances and to start composing original material. At fourteen she joined the seven-piece blues-and-rock outfit Seven Roads; she subsequently performed with a succession of cover bands to broaden her experience and earnings. By sixteen she had become a vocalist with the Blue Swing Orchestra.

A family friend assisted her in completing a first demo in 1994, and the tape reached Sugar Records. The following year found her in San Francisco cutting her debut single—“Inside a Flower” backed with “So Delicate So Pure”—under the guidance of established producer Corrado Rustici. Pipes & Flowers arrived in 1997 and earned double-platinum certification; after critics drew parallels to Alanis Morissette, the Italian Music Awards named her among the year’s outstanding new acts, and she received the Premio Tenco for best debut album in 1998.

Her second studio set, Asile’s World, appeared in 2000 and registered solid chart results, yet greater recognition arrived when she won the 2001 Sanremo Festival with “Luce (Tramonti a Nord Est),” whose Italian text she co-authored with Zucchero. That same year’s Then Comes the Sun omitted the contest entry but contained the widely recognized single “Dancing,” later featured on the television program So You Think You Can Dance. An English-language self-titled album issued in 2002 helped extend her reach to listeners abroad.

Lotus, released in 2003, marked her strongest chart placement to date; the live recording presented fresh renditions of earlier successes alongside covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” The Glen Ballard-produced follow-up Pearl Days, issued in 2004, entered the Italian chart at number two and paved the way for the retrospective Soundtrack ’96-’06, while Caterpillar targeted international markets. Heart, her sixth studio album, reached the top position in Italy in 2009, spotlighting the single “Ti Vorrei Sollevare” featuring Giuliano Sangiorgi of Negramaro, a cover of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” and a duet with Antony Hegarty. Within twelve months she issued the acoustic collection Ivy, which mixed three new compositions with reinterpretations of prior material and a reading of the Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979.”

L’Anima Vola, unveiled in September 2013, constituted Elisa’s first entirely Italian-language long-player; it ascended to number one, remained on the chart for more than eighteen months, and attained double-platinum status. Among its tracks was “Ancora Qui,” recorded with Ennio Morricone for the Grammy-nominated Django Unchained soundtrack. On returned her to the summit in 2016. Drawing on childhood journals, her 2018 Island Records debut Diari Aperti entered the chart at number two.