7 Stunning Music Videos of the Italo Disco Era
How Video Elevated 1980s Italian Music
In 1979, synth-pop band The Buggles released the decade-defining anthem “Video Killed the Radio Star” (1979), which also became the first music video to be aired on the newly minted MTV on the 1st of August 1981.
Italy would not get its own localized version till 1997, but in 1981, music videos in Italy began airing on a TV show called Mister Fantasy, a homage to the 1967 track “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (1967).
Recalling the setup of the video for “Video Killed the Radio Star,” Mister Fantasy was filmed in an all-white studio space, with screens showcasing music videos. The host, Carlo Massarini, wore white as well. Many of the early music videos (known, in Italy, as “videoclip”) were actually productions of Mister Fantasy, a program that not only amplified music videos but produced original content directly.
We found some examples of early music videos from the Italian music scene. Not all of them qualify as Italo disco, but they remain, nonetheless, capsules of 1980s visual culture in Italy, straddling between futurism and nostalgia.
La Bionda: I Wanna Be Your Lover (1980)
The premise is simple: “Two men in spacesuits went into outer space for a journey of their lifetime.” Directed by Guido Manuli, the music video has the feel of Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999 and anticipates space-themed epics such as Tron and even more auteur-like productions such as Magnetic Rose. Manuli also created the animations and animated sequences for the classical-crossover albums La Serenissima, Odissea Veneziana, and Casanova by Rondò Veneziano.
Pino D’Angiò: Una Notte Maledetta (1980)
In “Una Notte Maledetta,” Pino D’Angiò plays the role of the typical hard-boiled film noir protagonist while bemoaning his own loneliness, losses, and solitude. On video, this translates to gritty cityscapes, night lights, and dramatic lighting with a predilection for purples and teals. Direction was by Giandomenico Curi, a multi-hyphenate who extensively writes about pop music, cinema, and pop culture. As a director, he was one of the most trusted collaborators of the Mister Fantasy music-video enterprise. In 2005, he penned a biography of Italian-born French singer Dalida, titled Dalida: la voce e l’anima.
Donatella Rettore: Clamoroso (1981)
“Clamoroso” started off as the B-side of “Donatella” (1981), but its music video stands out for its narrative direction. Its frame story, where Rettore displays a look that is very reminiscent of Britney Spears in “...Baby One More Time” (1998), relays that Donatella (or a doppelgänger) has left the insane asylum, and we then follow her as she parades around city streets in a bridal getup, towering over her husband, whom she ends up murdering. The non-narrative segments have her dancing in an autobody shop, clad in silver and red.
Ivan Cattaneo: Il Geghegè (1981)
Nostalgia is not just the purview of Millennials and GenZ-ers. In the early 1980s, Ivan Cattaneo shifted from glam-rock to 1960s revivalism, and his appearances on Mister Fantasy solidified this new phase with the album 2060 Italian Graffiati with songs like "Nessuno mi può giudicare" and "Una zebra a pois". The music video of the cover of “Geghegè/Una zebra a pois” stands out for its zeitgeisty elements: a Saturday-Night-Fever-like dancefloor, a deep-space-like background, and Cattaneo himself channelling, with his moves, a combination of John Travolta and the Emcee in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret.
Matia Bazar: Il video sono io (1982)
“Il Video Sono Io” by Matia Bazar uses a bare-bones set, similar to a soundstage, where the group is surrounded by towers made of TV screens. The scenery alternates between the men on set seeing Ruggiero’s likeness on said screens and vice versa. When the cameras shift to close-ups, dramatic, colorful, and tech-enabled chiaroscuri turn this music video into a postmodernist work of art.
Amanda Lear: Assassino (1984)
Shot on location in New York City, Amanda Lear’s “Assassino” combines sun-drenched cityscapes, close-ups of “rough” neighborhoods, a male protagonist in full Greaser getup, and Amanda Lear in an update to her usual femme-fatale demeanor. In those years, erotic thrillers were a thriving genre, far from their 1990s peak, and Amanda Lear here channels a proto–Sharon Stone in highly eroticized entanglements with the title character, whom she begs for his love. The director is Mauro Bolognini, who specialized in historical drama, soft-core erotica, and opera stagecraft.
Gianna Nannini: Fotoromanza (1984)
https://music.apple.com/it/music-video/fotoromanza/1746538533
We are including this video for its novelty factor. It was, in fact, directed by auteur and director Michelangelo Antonioni, known for L’Eclisse (1962), Blowup (1966), L’avventura (1960). Well, the result was simply a play-by-play of the song’s lyrics, featuring a gas chamber and a burning building, among other things. You can compare it to a lyric video on YouTube, where you have clips instead of words. This was Antonioni’s only effort in the field. Unfortunately, due to copyright reasons, it cannot be watched on standard streaming websites. Research it on your own terms!