Do we like them?

Do we like Zucchero Fornaciari?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A clean run on the harm test and one court stain on the personal side, with too little readable coverage to go higher.

Zucchero is Adelmo Fornaciari, the Emilia-Romagna blues-rock singer who has been a huge name in Italy and across Europe for decades. In late 2022 he was celebrating 40 years in the business with big concerts at Campovolo in Reggio Emilia, which he called an honour to play in Europe's biggest arena.

He's not shy about a gripe. Around those shows he told Il Fatto Quotidiano that Sanremo hadn't invited him, not even to compete, and said the festival had become the “Festival degli influencer”. It's a grumpy-old-rocker line aimed at a TV show, not at any group of people, and he later reportedly said it was meant ironically.

The proper stain is in court. In January 2023 the civil court in Massa found him liable for defamation over passages in his 2011 autobiography about a former friend, and ordered about 37,000 euros in moral damages. His side argued the lines served the book's narrative, but the judge rejected that, saying the words were offensive and served only to discredit the man. The reporting doesn't say whether he appealed.

On the harm test, I went looking for anything he has said or done against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and for dodgy company in his recent work. Nothing turned up in the pages I could open. That's an honest gap as much as a clean sheet: much of the Italian coverage is gossip or tour listings, and several outlets wouldn't open for me.

Nothing new and messy on him lately that I could confirm. He's on a big touring run through 2026, with stadium shows in Italy and dates around Europe. His charity work, including benefit concerts with Luciano Pavarotti, came up in searches, but I couldn't pin it to a dated page I could read, so I'm not counting it here.

So the verdict: no red flags on what he stands behind, and one real black mark for how he wrote about a former friend. It's a one-off rather than a pattern, which is why it's an asterisk and not a fail. If you want a decisive yes, you'd want more on his record in English than I could find.