Franco Battiato

Franco Battiato (born March 23, 1945) is an Italian singer-songwriter, composer, filmmaker and painter. He is considered one of the most original personalities in Italian music from the 1970s to now. Together with Alice, Franco Battiato represented Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest 1984 with the melody I treni di Tozeur. Battiato's songs are dreamy, controversial collages of images and sensations, very experimental and convoluted, rich of esoteric, philosophical and East Asian religious themes. His collaborations with the nihilistic-cynical philosopher Manlio Sgalambro have added further depth to his apparently nonsensical lyrics, with references to Emil Cioran, Friedrich Nietzsche and other anarchistic and problematic thinkers.