From Vasco to Battiato, the Songs That Still Stop a Conversation  They are not the songs of a single genre or a single mood. They range from Neapolitan ballad to new wave, from arena rock to cabaret, from the stadium to the kitchen table. But the ten songs on this list share something that is harder to define and easier to feel: they stayed. Decades after their release, they are still playing in bars and cars and living rooms across Italy, still capable of stopping a conversation or starting one. Here, in no particular order, are ten Italian songs from the late 1970s and 1980s that have earned their place in the canon. Umberto Tozzi, "Gloria" (1979) Before Laura Branigan covered it and introduced it to the world, "Gloria" was already a phenomenon in Italy. Tozzi wrote a song that somehow manages to be both desperate and euphoric at the same time, and the tension between those two things is what has kept it alive. It is one of the most internationally recognised Italian pop songs ever recorded.  Lucio Dalla, "Caruso" (1986) Dalla wrote "Caruso" in a hotel room in Sorrento overlooking the Bay of Naples, reportedly in a single night. The song tells the story of the great tenor Enrico Caruso's final days, and it does so with a tenderness and gravity that places it in a category of its own. It has been covered by Pavarotti, by Andrea Bocelli, and by dozens of others, none of whom have quite matched the quiet authority of the original. Vasco Rossi, "Vita spericolata" (1983) The anthem of a generation that did not want to be told what to do. Vasco Rossi had been making records for years before "Vita spericolata" broke through at Sanremo, finishing last in the competition and going on to become one of the most beloved Italian rock songs ever made. The gap between those two facts says something important about the relationship between Italian pop institutions and Italian popular taste. Ricchi e Poveri, "Sarà perché ti amo" (1981) Ricchi e Poveri were already a well-established act when "Sarà perché ti amo" gave them their biggest hit. The song is almost absurdly simple, which is probably why it has proved so durable. It asks nothing of the listener except to remember what it felt like to be in love and slightly helpless about it. Rino Gaetano, "Il cielo è sempre più blu" (1975) Rino Gaetano is one of the great what-ifs of Italian music. He died in a road accident in 1981 at the age of 30, leaving behind a body of work that combined social satire with genuine melodic beauty. "Il cielo è sempre più blu" is the most emblematic thing he ever recorded, a song that lists the contradictions and injustices of Italian society with deadpan precision, set over a melody so cheerful it almost disguises what it is saying. It has aged better than almost anything else from its era. Anna Oxa, "Un'emozione da poco" (1978) Anna Oxa arrived at Sanremo in 1978 at the age of 16 with a punk-inflected energy that nobody in Italian pop was quite prepared for, and "Un'emozione da poco" announced her as something genuinely new. The song has a controlled ferocity to it that still sounds modern, and Oxa's vocal performance remains one of the most distinctive in the history of the festival. Gianna Nannini, "America" (1979) Nannini had been recording for several years when "America" gave her a breakthrough, and the song captures something of the restlessness and ambivalence that Italian artists of her generation felt toward both their own country and the culture that was arriving from abroad. It is a rock song with a sharp edge and a hook that refuses to leave. Renato Zero, "Il triangolo" (1978) Renato Zero has always been a performer as much as a musician, and "Il triangolo" is one of those songs that works equally well as spectacle and as something to listen to alone. Playful, theatrical, and built around a melody that lodges itself immediately in the memory, it is as good an introduction to Zero's world as anything in his catalogue. Francesco De Gregori, "La donna cannone" (1983) De Gregori is a poet who happens to write songs, and "La donna cannone" is one of his finest. The story of a circus strongwoman who falls in love is told with such detail and such feeling that by the end it has become something much larger than its subject. It is a song about longing, about being seen, and about what it costs to be different, and it has lost none of its power in the forty years since it was written. Franco Battiato, "Centro di gravità permanente" (1981) There is nothing else quite like it in Italian music. Battiato assembled the song from fragments of philosophy, travel, and personal obsession, set them over a melody of almost classical simplicity, and somehow produced something that became a mass hit. It is a song about the search for stillness in a chaotic world, and the fact that it found an audience of millions suggests that a great many people knew exactly what he was looking for. Ph: Oke Timpke / Shutterstock.com