Nek

Filippo Neviani records under the stage name Nek as an Italian singer and songwriter who first embraced music in childhood by taking up both guitar and drums at age nine. Late in the 1980s he built a following on the Italian club scene through two separate groups, the country-tinged Winchester and the soft-rock band White Lady. His solo bow, issued as the first release under the Nek name, appeared in 1992, after which two further LPs over the next five years steadily enlarged his reputation and audience. A 1997 signing with WEA led him to the Sanremo Music Festival, where the breakout single “Laura non C’è” emerged. That song featured on his fourth album, Lei, Gli Amici e Tutto Il Resto, whose Spanish-language edition helped the project reach listeners across Europe and Latin America. Two more studio releases sustained his momentum into the early 2000s and paved the way for his first greatest-hits package, The Best of Nek: L’anno Zero, in 2003. Throughout the remainder of the decade his albums routinely entered the Italian Top Ten. A second compilation arrived in 2010; three years later he issued the well-regarded Filippo Neviani, a set dedicated to his late father, who had always hoped to see the surname Neviani on an album cover. Uniquely in Nek’s solo discography, he performed every instrument on the recording. Nek returned to Sanremo for a third time in February 2015, taking second prize with “Fatti Avanti Amore,” and released his twelfth studio album, Prima di Parlare, one month afterward. In October 2016 he delivered his thirteenth LP, Unici, which climbed to number two on the Italian charts.