Achille Lauro

Achille Lauro, the stage name of Lauro De Marinis (Rome, July 11, 1990), is an Italian singer-songwriter, rapper and showman, known for his eclectic style blending various musical genres, from trap to pop, through rock and electronic music. His artistic path is marked by continuous stylistic shifts, which have established him as one of the most distinctive faces on the contemporary Italian music scene.

Achille Lauro began his musical career in the early 2010s as a rapper on Rome's underground scene. His early work is characterized by typical rap sonorities, but his career takes a decisive turn with the release of “Achille Idol” in 2014, which brings him to wider public attention. The mix of raw language and provocative themes, combined with an outsider attitude, allows him to quickly emerge on the Italian rap scene.

In 2017, Lauro moves closer to pop and commercial music with the album “Ragazzi madre”, which represents an important step in his artistic evolution, featuring a more melodic and accessible sound while retaining a certain transgressiveness in the lyrics. His participation in the Sanremo Festival in 2019 with “Rolls Royce” marks a real turning point in his career. The track, which blends pop and trap sounds, achieves great success and marks his definitive breakthrough into the mainstream as well. During his appearance at the festival, Achille Lauro also stands out for his provocative look and eccentric style, elements that will become a trademark of his persona.

And so Achille Lauro, the pioneer of samba trap, the lover of tequila and marijuana, of dinero and Maseratis, who the previous summer had gotten everyone dancing with his fusion work “Pour l'amour”, returns with a new album, “1969”, which moves away from Latin-tinged and house rhythms to open up to new experiments. 1969 is a revolutionary year for many reasons: the implantation of the first artificial heart, Jim Morrison's arrest for indecent exposure in public, the marriage of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, man's first moon landing, the Woodstock Festival, the release of the films “Fellini Satyricon” and “Easy Rider”, to name a few. And Lauro, too, in 2019, wants to stage his own revolution: this predictable change of course had begun with the release of the Sanremo track “Rolls Royce”, a dose of rock that winks at the best of Vasco Rossi and departs from his previous output in terms of sound and rhythm. And it's precisely “Rolls Royce” that opens the record, with its climax of raw, bare guitars that explode in the chorus, and its praise of elegance, recklessness, and the most unbridled luxury. A track that Morgan described as dadaist for its brilliance and unpredictability, and one that was certainly able to shake the Italian music scene out of a torpor made of rubbery, all-the-same pop. The second single released, “C'est la vie”, also achieves good success: an abrupt change of register to make room for an intimacy made of pain and resignation, a search for empathy and estrangement, fire and flames slowly destroying everything. Oxymorons such as “bitter sugar” are used to describe a poisoned love, a fairy tale in which the princess has turned into Lucifer. The tracks “Cadillac” (whose guitars recall “Personal Jesus”), “Delinquente” and “1969”, will instead get crowds going at concerts, rhythmic and overwhelming just like “Rolls Royce”.

In 2020, it's the turn of “Lauro”, an album that further marks his artistic evolution, pushing increasingly towards melodic pop and rock. The album contains successful singles such as “Me ne frego” and “Bam Bam Twist”. His musical style, now less anchored to trap and more open to other influences, makes him one of the most prominent figures on the Italian music scene, even if the quality of his early work remains out of reach.

In 2021 he takes part once again in the Sanremo Festival with “Domenica”, a track that further consolidates his image as a provocative and innovative performer. His provocative eccentricity and theatrical performances put him at the center of attention both in the music world and in the entertainment and fashion scene. His first ten years of career are chronicled in the docufilm “Ragazzi madre – L'Iliade”, while in 2024 he is also chosen as a judge for the new edition of “X Factor”.

A year later, he's back at Sanremo with “Incoscienti giovani”, a prelude to the new album “Mortal Commons”, with which the flamboyant Achille Lauro continues his run towards the theatricalization of Italian music, blending singer-songwriter craft, glam, pop and vintage flourishes into a mix that, as usual, promises a lot but delivers far too little. The artist, so chameleonic as to come across as simply confused, attempts to play the card of authorial depth, but does so with a vocal delivery that is often uncertain and flat, struggling to bear the emotional weight of the lyrics. With the spotlight on the content, moreover, it's hard not to notice the numerous banalities and tiresome rhetorical devices.