Aiello

Cosenza, Sydney, and a very slow start

Antonio Aiello was born in Cosenza on 26 July 1985 and performs under his surname alone. He took up the piano at ten, moved to the violin, and at sixteen turned to singing and writing his own material. The path from there was not quick. In 2011 he relocated to Sydney, played with a local band, and released a first single, 'Riparo', in October of that year.

Then almost nothing for six years. The EP 'Hi-Hello' came out in May 2017 on Irma Records, trailed by the single 'Come stai'. He was in his early thirties, a long way from the usual Italian pop timeline, and still functionally unknown outside Calabria.

The year it moved

2019 changed the arithmetic. 'Arsenico', released that March, took the Premio Lunezia 'Stil Novo' award and became the song people recognised. 'La mia ultima storia' followed in September and was certified platinum. The debut album 'Ex voto' arrived the same month on RCA and reached number 19 in Italy.

A separate credit from the same period is worth noting: 'Festa', written for the 2020 film 'Bangla', was nominated for best original song at the David di Donatello. Within eighteen months he had gone from an EP almost nobody heard to a major-label artist with a film award nomination and a platinum single.

Sanremo 2021, and the correction that took five years

In March 2021 he competed in the 71st Sanremo Festival in the main category with 'Ora', and finished 25th. He had vocal cord trouble on the Ariston stage and the performance became a meme — the kind of thing that outlives the song by some distance. The second album, 'Meridionale', landed in the same month and later took the Best Album prize at the Fatti di Musica festival.

'Romantico' followed in 2023 and peaked at number 26, a step down from the debut. After that came scattered singles — 'Talete' in May 2024, 'Tutto sbagliato' that October — and no album for three years.

Aiello has since been explicit about what was happening in that gap. He has spoken of roughly three years in therapy, of insecurity and ego, of exercise and meditation and reading, and of moving house from Rome to Milan. He changed management, taking on Carla Armogida specifically to find someone who would push him towards bolder decisions. And about a year before the new record came out, he scrapped an album that was already finished because the musical choices in it no longer felt like his. He has also made a kind of peace with the Ariston episode, calling it fortunate because it forced the psychological work, and has gone as far as sending up his own meme on TikTok.

'Scorpione': nine tracks, R&B, and the hidden half

The fourth studio album, 'Scorpione', was released on 22 May 2026 — digital, CD and a signed vinyl sold through the Sony Music Store. Nine tracks. Aiello produced it with BRAIL (Jacopo Sinigaglia) and Marcello Guava.

The title is astrological and deliberately two-faced. Aiello is a Leo sun with a Scorpio ascendant and moon, and he has described Leo as the version he presents outwards — proud, solar, chest out — and Scorpio as the part he had always kept back. The record is the attempt to let the second one speak.

Musically it pushes R&B to the front. He cites Frank Ocean, SZA, Daniel Caesar and Justin Bieber as the daily listening he has had since he was sixteen, and Pino Daniele, Mina and Lucio Dalla as the Italian line he is trying to fold that into. The production is lo-fi and close rather than big. Asked why R&B sells poorly in Italy compared with the United States, he has said plainly that he does not have an answer beyond the weight of the cantautore tradition.

There are three features: Antonia on 'Fiammiferi', Leo Gassmann on the title track, and Levante on 'Sentimentale', which had gone out as the lead single back in October 2025. The opener, 'ADL (Artisti del Love)', is written as a goodbye to Rome. 'Mille uragani' is addressed to himself, about finding the enjoyment in music again. 'Giganti' he has called among the best words he has written.

February at the Ariston, June in Roppongi

The most consequential appearance of 2026 was not his own. On 27 February, on the fourth night of the 76th Sanremo Festival — the covers and duets night — Aiello came back to the Ariston as a guest of competitor Leo Gassmann. The two sang Riccardo Cocciante's 'Era già tutto previsto', trading a heavier orchestral reading of it, and the recording was released as a single the following day. Aiello has said Gassmann let him rewrite his page on that stage.

In June he took the new record abroad. He played the tenth edition of 'Italia, amore mio!' at Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, the largest Italian festival in Japan, which ran from 5 to 7 June 2026 with Niccolò Fabi and Maria Antonietta with Colombre also on the bill.

A summer at home, then seven rooms

The summer run, produced by Vivo Concerti, was short and heavily weighted towards the south. Riccia in Molise on 14 June, Marina di Capo d'Orlando in Sicily on 17 July, then Polistena on 18 July — free entry, outdoors in Piazza della Repubblica, a 9pm start — and San Nicola Arcella in his own province of Cosenza on 11 August, opening the Arcella Open Air festival above the Gulf of Policastro with doors at 8pm and music at 9.30pm. Sal Da Vinci and Fiorella Mannoia followed him at that festival on 13 and 20 August.

The autumn run is the real one: the Tour Club 2026, seven indoor dates, also with Vivo Concerti. It opens with the data zero at the Hall in Padua on 5 November, then Teatro Concordia in Venaria Reale on the 6th, Estragon in Bologna on the 8th, Teatro Cartiere Carrara in Florence on the 11th, Atlantico in Rome on the 13th, Casa della Musica in Naples on the 16th, and closes at the Fabrique in Milan on the 19th. Standard tickets have been listed at €34.50, with an early-entry tier at €64.50 for Milan, and dates were still showing availability as of October 2026. No support acts have been announced for any of the seven.