Born in Florence on 18 September 1964, Marco Masini inherited his passion for music from his mother's family, demonstrating a certain talent for playing and composing by ear at an early age. In 1986, thanks to Roberto Rosati, he first met Beppe Dati and then Giancarlo Bigazzi and with them he began working on some soundtracks, he was the lead vocalist of ‘’Si può dare di più’’ (by the trio Morandi, Ruggeri and Tozzi), and he was a live performer in Tozzi's tour and Raf's tour.
In 1990 came the turning point: Giancarlo Bigazzi decided to produce Marco by having him participate in Sanremo with ‘’Disperato’’, which he won in the ‘’Giovani'' section. From here, Ricordi released his first record: 'Marco Masini'. Given its enormous success, the following year Marco returns to Sanremo and finishes in 3rd place with ‘'Perché lo fai’’, whose single turns out to be the best-selling album in Italy and France in 1991. The album containing it is called ‘’Malinconoia’’. With it, Marco won that year's Festivalbar and sold more than 1.5 million copies in Europe. Together with his success, however, the first difficulties began, media opinion split in two, giving rise to two strange currents of thought, one Masini-like, the other completely against. As a sort of response, in 1993 Marco decided to publish the song ‘’Vaffanculo’', a sincere and courageous outburst against his denigrators, who accused him of being a pessimist and bearer of misfortune. The song anticipates the album ’’T’innamorerai’', which has sold over a million copies in Europe. Controversy and censorship continued two years later when, in January 1995, the album ‘’Il cielo della Vergine’’ was released, containing in particular the songs ‘’Bella stronza’’ and ‘’Principessa’’, with very strong and explicit lyrics.
The album was released in Italy and Europe, remaining at the top of the charts for over six months, equalling the success of the previous album. After the release of the first ‘’Best’’ (‘’L'amore sia con te’’, 1996), in 1998 Marco artistically detached himself from Bigazzi and released the album ‘’Scimmie’’, a record experiment inspired by 70s-style Rock.
The following year, Marco released the single ‘’Il giorno più banale’’, a universal Christmas greeting, which was followed by the album ‘'Raccontami di te’’, presented by the song of the same name at the 2000 Sanremo Festival. Despite the less than brilliant result obtained at the end of the song festival, the album sold very well and the subsequent theatrical tour was very successful. Less than a year later, Marco also released ‘’Uscita di sicurezza’’ (2001), a record that also marked a temporary artistic reunion with Giancarlo Bigazzi. However, these were difficult years for Marco and for Italian music in general: on 17 April 2001, the artist therefore decided to denounce everything to the news and announce his retirement from the stage, as he was unable to work.
His public, however, never ceases to show its closeness to the Florentine singer-songwriter, and fortunately this is not in vain: after meeting again with his 'discographer and friend' Mario Ragni, Marco releases the album ‘’Il mio cammino’’ in October 2003, containing three previously unreleased tracks (in particular the significant ‘’Generation’’ and some rearrangements and reharmonisations of his previous hits. The real redemption came in March 2004: having presented the song ‘’L'uomo volante’’ at the Sanremo Festival, Marco triumphed in the televoting, won the prize of the artistic commission for best lyrics and the prize awarded by the Radio and TV Private Press Room. With the album ‘’Masini’’, a re-edition of ‘’II mio cammino’’ also containing ‘’L'uomo volante’’ and ‘’E ti amo’’, Marco, now in his forties, succeeds in the most difficult task of all: to get back into people's hearts, as well as in the Top 10 of the sales charts and radio airplay. The following year, at the invitation of Paolo Bonolis, Marco returned to Sanremo and presented ‘’Nel mondo dei sogni’’, enjoying great success. The album was released in Italy on 10 June 2005 under the title ‘'Il giardino delle api’’. 2006 saw Marco Masini involved in a new unreleased project with Umberto Tozzi: the album ‘’Tozzi Masini’’ was released. With a calling card of more than fifty million records sold in their career and with the song ‘’Come si fa…?’', the unreleased couple, no longer very young, also caught the favour of the more 'trendy' radio networks. The following year, Marco embarked on a new experience: freely inspired by H. C. Andersen's fairy tale, he presented the show ‘’Il brutto anatroccolo’', in which the songs that best described the different moments of his life were alternated with recitations, all performed acoustically.
Masini appeared at the 2009 Sanremo Festival with the song ‘’L’Italia’’, a declaration of Marco's love for his country, which was followed a few days later by the album ‘’L'Italia... e altre storie’’. Career and life spent on music, Marco Masini celebrates them with the album ‘’Un palco lungo... 20 anni’’, twenty years of poetry and music by Masini collected in a box set released on 23 November 2010. In 2011, ‘’Niente d’importante’’ was released. A journey into planet love by an artist who still searches for the meaning of life through the only reason for living that each of us has: to love in order to be loved. 2012 sees him starring in a theatrical tour that touches the 15 most important Italian cities and continues in the squares for the summer tour.
In 2013, he took part in ‘’Canzonissima’', as part of the programme ‘’I migliori anni’’ hosted by Carlo Conti, managing to place first in all episodes. In April 2013, a new challenge arrived for Marco: for the first time a solo theatrical tour presented in theatres. Just piano and voice. On 26 March 2013, his new CD was released, shortly anticipating the tour and bearing his own title: ‘’La mia storia piano e voce’’. Under the banner of the desire for something new that pervades Marco, the album features two previously unreleased tracks, ‘’Io ti volevo’’ and ‘’Aspettami lì’', while his greatest hits are re-proposed in a completely new guise. After a 2014 that saw him perform in Italy and abroad, in 2015 Marco returned to the Sanremo Festival for the seventh time, competing with the song ‘'Che giorno è’’. In 2017, Marco returns to the Sanremo Festival with the song 'Spostato di un secondo' taken from the album of the same name, which placed among the 50 best-selling albums of 2017. In 2018 he began a new adventure as judge and coach for the programmes ‘’SANREMO YOUNG’’ and ‘’ORA O MAI PIU’’'on RAI 1, leading the 2 contestants to victory.
In 2020 Marco Masini is celebrating 30 years of his artistic career with the album ‘’MASINI +1, 30TH ANNIVERSARY’’ containing 15 of the artist's greatest hits reinterpreted with colleagues and friends and 4 previously unreleased tracks including the song competing at the 70th Sanremo Festival 2020 ‘’Il confronto’’. The album is the perfect celebration of 30 years of music by Marco Masini, an artist capable of narrating the world without rhetoric, with an extremely direct and expressive language combined with a touching and empathetic sensitivity that gets straight to people's hearts. In the same year, he announced the ‘’30th Anniversary Tour’’, a sold-out tour in the main Italian and European theatres, thus returning to embrace his beloved live audience and celebrating 30 years of career together, consecrated by the appointment at the Arena di Verona on 30 September 2021, which saw him perform with many exclusive special guests: Umberto Tozzi, Nek, Annalisa, Ambra Angiolini, Francesco Renga, Luca Carboni, Ermal Meta and many others.
On 9 May 2021 he performed a live streaming concert at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, courtesy of the Fondazione Teatro della Toscana. It was an opportunity to hear his greatest hits in a special acoustic version, as well as some songs rediscovered especially for the show. The concert is released on 14 October 2022 in a special box produced by Momy Records and Concerto Music, distributed by BMG Italy, entitled ‘’Live at Teatro della Pergola’’. It contains the following products: double 12'' vinyl (Purple Edition), digipack CD + DVD, copy of the original score of "Disperato" autographed, 5 cards and slipmat.
On 25 October 2022, he published his first book entitled ‘’L’altalena - La mia storia’’ for Mondadori. Marco watching and narrating Masini is the point of view in this autobiographical, intense, profound, life-long story. At the threshold of sixty years, of which thirty years of career, among 7 million records sold, numerous hits (’’T’innamorerai’', ‘’Bella stronza’’ and others), thousands of concerts and billions of kilometres to reach his beloved piano on Italian stages, with ‘’L’altalena’' Marco Masini puts down on paper what his public still does not know. With the amplifiers removed and the lights dismantled, in this book it is the adult man who looks at the singer to understand each other, perhaps forgive each other something and make peace with all those fears that have now become memories. For this is the time of rediscovering harmony, of putting things back into place, recognising the overall sense of having always been on a swing. ‘’I wanted to take a trip, to look at my adventure from the outside, to try to read it as if it were not my own. The story of a 20-year-old boy with a dream, any dream. The story of a boy who starts a career, with the normal difficulties of anyone embarking on a path, and who is projected into Olympus, among the greats, only to find himself having to recapture, year after year, record after record, every inch of road made on a swing.’’
In 2022 he announced ’’T'innamorerai di noi - Oltre 30 anni insieme’’, the new tour that saw him busy until 2023: numerous shows in the most important Italian theatres, born from Marco's need to thank his audience for these more than 30 years spent together, in love with each other. The tour will end with two special dates, on 1 July at the Cavea of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone in Rome and on 19 July at the MusArt Festival in Piazza della Santissima Annunziata in Florence. Two evenings not to be missed and full of surprises, with the live preview of two previously unreleased tracks (one in Rome and one in Florence), which will be contained in the new record project currently in the works, to be released by BMG Italy.
