Soul-Dier

Tiziano Ferro was born in Latina on February 21, 1980. His approach to music began at the age of five with a Christmas gift: a small keyboard. From a very young age, he dedicated himself to composing, creating musical bases with simple resources and recording them with a tape recorder. Even two of these early compositions, created at the age of seven, found their place at the end of the album *Nessuno è solo*. During his adolescence, Tiziano went through complicated moments, dealing with shyness and bulimia, which led to significant weight gain. Music became his refuge, driving him to take guitar, singing, piano, and drums lessons. In 1996, at the age of sixteen, he joined the Latina Gospel Choir, where he developed a great interest in the rhythms and sounds of African-American music. That same year, and extending into 1997, he took a distance course in film dubbing and began working as a voice-over artist on some local radio stations. His participation as a contestant on the television show *Caccia alla frase* on Italia 1 gave him a brief opportunity to showcase his talent, although the presenter Peppe Quintale was not encouraging about his aspirations. However, Tiziano persisted and in 1997 enrolled in the Accademia della Canzone di Sanremo, with an eye on the 1998 Sanremo Festival. The first single taken from *Rosso relativo* was *Xdono*. The great reception and high sales surprised Tiziano himself, which encouraged him to record in Spanish. With the release of the single *Perdona*, he achieved gold certification for sales, but it was with *Alucinado* that the album achieved platinum certification in Mexico.