The normalization of Achille Lauro

There is a detail that catches the eye when scrolling through the titles of the songs that make up the setlist of Achille Lauro’s concerts in the sports halls: every trace of “Achille Idol immortale”, “Dio c’è” and “Ragazzi madre”, the albums from his early days as a rapper, has been somehow erased. The most recent songs are “Bvlgari” And “Thoiry”, from 2018. «Yesterday I went to the concert of Achille Lauro and honestly I preferred it years ago when it did samba trap with the Maranza audience and not now the idol of an audience of 50-60 year old women with wallet covers”, wrote a user on tours by Achille Lauro in the sports halls. “But he himself is a 50/60 year old woman now,” another replied. At the bottom turning point of Achille Lauro is all in this very funny exchange, which will have brought a smile to his face too and which perfectly summarizes the way in which today the voice of “Rolls Royce“is perceived today. When did it happen? Were we distracted? Didn’t we notice? Suddenly Achille Lauro became the most reassuring, familiar and harmless of Italy, capable of moving the masses and making everyone agree. At his concerts you see an audience varied and transversal. Mothers and aunts who in the end were able to see the good in that artist who they initially looked at with suspicion. Girls little more than teenagers who know every chorus by heart, from compulsively listening to his songs on the platforms. Husbands forcibly dragged by their wives: until a few years ago they would never have thought of buying a ticket for one of his concerts and instead now here they are singing «Where are you going now? Without buts, without ifs, without teeee… Desperate love». Everyone wants a piece of him. The numbers confirm it. The album “Ordinary mortals“, released on 18 April 2025, almost a year ago, has been in the Fimi ranking of best sellers in Italy for 48 weeks. Without reprints. Without “deluxe edition”. Without various tricks. Of these 48 weeks it has spent 25 in top 20a good part of which in top ten. In the last week eight of his songs have ended up in the top 200 of the most streamed songs on Spotify: “March 16”, “Head over heels”, “love”, “Desperate love”, “Unconscious young people”, “Without a stupid story” and the duet with Laura Pausini on the same “16 marzo”. The concerts of the tour in the sports halls, which started on March 4th from Eboli and will end on March 29th in Bologna, are all sold out: 145 thousand tickets sold. Also sold out for the concerts on June 10th at the Olimpico in Rome and on June 15th in Milan, his first in stadiumswhile there are still very few tickets left for the June 7th date in Rimini. He will return to perform in stadiums in the summer of 2027, this time with a tours real, of which he is announcing the stages directly from the stages of the sports halls in which he performs.

“Rolls Royce” and the controversies

A step back. Sanremo8 February 2019. The Italian Song Festival. In the race, among the various Ultimo, Il Volo, Loredana Bertè, Simone Cristicchi, Daniele Silvestri, Irama, Arisa, Francesco Renga, Nek, Patty Pravo (with Briga) and Anna Tatangelo there is also Achille Lauro. The public is getting to know him in recent days: he arrived at Ariston as a complete stranger, despite being a leading name on the scene Italian rap for several years. In Sanremo, however, he doesn’t sing a rapper piece, but a song punk rock,”Rolls RoyceIt’s one of the revelations of this edition of the Festival (the real revelation will be Mahmood, surprise winner with his “Soldi”). With everything that entails. Starting from amedia exposure which is both a cross and a delight. First the accusations of plagiarismput forward by those who maintain that his “Rolls Royce” resembles “1979” by the Smashing Pumpkins too much (ironically, the album that will collect the Sanremo song will be titled “1969”). Then the speculations around the presumed meaning of his song, which pays homage to some rock legends, from the Doors to Amy Winehouse, from Jimi Hendrix to Elvis: “Rolls Royce”, it is argued, would be nothing more than a anthem to drugs. Specifically, to a tablet called exactly that: “Rolls Royce”. In Sanremo Achille Lauro receives a visit from Valerio Staffelli: the correspondent of “Striscia la notizia” has arrived in the Ligurian city specifically to deliver to the voice of “Rolsl Royce” the Golden tapir. «We came to bring him the tapir because we saw that you brought this song to the Festival which is a hymn to ectasy», says Staffelli, with the air of a bigot. «I should give you the Tapir, because it seems surreal, ridiculous to me. You should inform yourself well», replies Achille, while his trusted right-hand man Boss Doms, at his side, laughs under his mustache. «I informed myself. You are a drug expert. He was a pusher. But who are we kidding? It’s not correct for kids”, insists Staffelli. «Make you laugh, the song talks about world stars…», Lauro is about to say. But Staffelli interrupts him: «… who have had problems with drugs». Lauro is in trouble. He gets nervous. He constantly takes off and puts back his sunglasses. Boss Doms tries to intervene, but he interrupts him: «I’ll answer». Then he takes the Tapir and gives it to Staffelli: «You are ignorant, I will give you the Tapir: to the largest tuna in Italy. The Rolls Royce is a car.” In the end Lauro leaves, chased by Staffelli who continues to accuse him of having participated in the Sanremo Festival «to advertise drugs».

“An anthropological mutation”

Striscia’s battle against Lauro continues in the days following the Festival, where Lauro finishes ninth. On February 12, three days after the conclusion of the event, Antonio Ricci’s satirical news program returns to attack the former Roman rapper. It does this by broadcasting videos of old Lauro concerts, in which the latter was the protagonist altercations with some kids in the audience. Images that look at them today seem to belong to another geological era. Like those of Lauro’s subsequent participation in Sanremo 2020between the Saint Francis onesie and theseventeenth-century dress to Queen Elizabeth. And what about the mechanical bull who took to Eurovision the year in which – it was 2022 – in order to participate in the international event he decided to represent San Marino and was eliminated after the first pass? Memories of a time, now very distant, in which Achille Lauro was for a fewsynonymous – for a significant part of the general public – with provocation, excess and ambiguity. Today Achille Lauro is for everyone, however: popular in the broadest sense of the term. At the last Sanremo Festival, wanted by Carlo Conti as co-host of one of the five evenings (it was his seventh participation in eight years: four times in the competition, once as a regular guest, once on the external stage, once as co-host), all dressed in white, he was welcomed by stadium chants from the fur-clad ladies of the Ariston audience. After throwing his Mother Foundation to help young people in difficulty, Achille with the heart of gold moved everyone with the tribute to the victims of Crans-Montana on the notes of “Perdutamente”, one of the songs from “Comuni mortals”: «Music is something that has the task of moving, making us dream, making us reflect, but also supporting and comforting us. Sometimes it is able to touch such deep chords that it goes beyond words, becoming a great friend and making us feel less alone. And if he did this even for an instant, then he accomplished his most authentic meaning,” he said. Concita De Gregorio, who interviewed him for U di Repubblica, spoke of one «anthropological mutation»: «A teenager who grew up teetering on the precipice of drugs, death in prison, who becomes Mastronianni», he writes. And again: «He is every mother’s son, the living being with whom girls and boys would like, not to say get engaged, but to marry. The grown-up that children would like to become.”

How human, the new Achilles

X Factorin 2024, has repositioned. Then it came”Desperate love”, one ballad «about a story born on the borders of Rome’s ring road, in via Tina Pica, the absolute icon of Luigi Comencini’s films and of the masterpiece of pink neorealism “Bread, love and imagination”». Finally the return to competition in Sanremo with “Unconscious young people”, last year: he who on that stage always played at breaking screens, at being over the topit showed romantic and classiccomplete with an ’80s sax solo in the special. Normal, indeed. Eventually he realized that to make the leap forward he had to take a step back. Rather than continue to add accessories to his music, he who in a handful of years has moved on from samba trap al punk rockthen from punk rock to90s electronicsthen from 90s electronics to swingthen from swing back to punk rock, then from punk rock to dancehe had to do the reverse operation: remove the superstructuresleaving only the bare minimum. So, as if by magic, thatdisturbing and divisive aura that characterized it, suddenly disappeared. Those songs that once made people turn up their noses, today arouse other sensations: they move. They lead to an intense emotional participation and affective, talking about relationships, fragility, family, sense of belonging: when in “Cristina” he turns to his mother and thanks her for having managed to raise him, amidst a thousand difficulties and sacrifices (“But you made it, mother / but you made it, mother”), he becomes the son of all mothers in Italy. Asks to be hugged, as on “love“. “I no longer forcefully chase numbers, I no longer participate in the summer hit game. Today with my music I want leave something great to people”, he explains, summarizing his new urgency. Not that of shocking, but that of remain. He titled the album “Ordinary mortals”, because “it underlines the great fragility that unites us, that vulnerability that makes us all equal, all so human.”
It is worth quoting Nietzsche and also a little Fantozzi: how human, too human, this new Achilles is.