Do we like Laura Pausini?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A long, steady career with documented support for LGBTQ+ people and women, and one contested call on a song that cost her some goodwill.
Pausini is the Italian pop voice that went global. She broke through in 1993, and by 2023 she was marking thirty years in music, singing in Italian and Spanish to huge crowds across Europe and Latin America. Her 2026 world tour is still rolling.
The harm check comes up clean. In 2023 the Latin Recording Academy named her its Person of the Year, with the honour citing her support for equality for women and for LGBTQ+ people. She has also backed causes against violence against women, and in a 2024 interview she was reported to be revisiting her song about climate change, “Hermana Tierra”.
The one real stoush is about a song. In 2022 she declined to sing “Bella ciao” on Spanish TV, and online critics accused her of siding with the right. She put out a statement saying “Aborro il fascismo e ogni forma di dittatura” (I abhor fascism and every form of dictatorship), and explained she saw the song as a freedom anthem often used politically on a light entertainment show.
It flared again around Sanremo this year. Corriere columnist Aldo Cazzullo wrote that she had “scelto la destra anti-antifascista”, while the right-leaning paper Libero ran his line and defended her. Where you land depends on whether you read her refusal as dodging a campaign or as taking a side, but her own words and acts don't show harm.
The latest dust-up is the Winter Olympics. Her version of the Italian anthem at the Milano-Cortina opening ceremony was called overdone by some critics, but Vasco Rossi defended her, and she said his support left her with her heart “esploderé” again, in her words. It's a fuss about vocal runs, not values.
The good stuff is real: the Latin Recording Academy honour, a Diversity Media Awards title for her support of LGBTQ+ people, and a record of charity work with groups like UNICEF and the World Food Programme. That's from a single profile, so it's not a deep audit. We found no court losses and no credible allegations of mistreating anyone.