Paola Iezzi Italian Singer Born 1974 in Milan

Early life

Paola Iezzi was born on 30 March 1974 in Milan to parents from Chieti, in the Abruzzo region. At high school her teacher of Latin, Greek and Italian was the singer-songwriter Roberto Vecchioni. She later began singing with her sister Chiara in rock and funk groups on the Milanese underground scene, until the producer Claudio Cecchetto noticed them and hired them to support the group 883 in 1995 and 1996.

Career

In 1996 the sisters founded the duo Paola e Chiara. They won the "New Proposals" category of the Sanremo Music Festival in 1997 with the song "Amici come prima". Their most successful single, "Vamos a bailar (Esta vida nueva)", came out in 2000 and was taken from the album Television, which went platinum. In 2012 The Guardian named their song "Non puoi dire di no" among the ten best Italian pop songs of the previous fifty years. After eight studio albums and many other releases, the pair announced in the summer of 2013 that the project was permanently over. They became active again about ten years later, following their appearance at the Sanremo Music Festival in 2023. The duo is described as the best-selling girl group in Italy, with more than six million records sold.

Iezzi launched her solo career in 2009, after thirteen years with her sister, with the English-language single "Alone", which drew on soul and R&B. The physical release stayed at the top of the independent-label singles ranking for seven weeks in a row, and its video, shot by the fashion photographer Paolo Santambrogio, was a candidate for an Italian videoclip award. In 2012 she sang "In adorazione di te" as a duet with the producer Stiv, co-produced it and helped devise the idea for its video. A few months later she released the digital-only EP Xcept You, which draws on disco-dance sounds of the late 1970s. In that year she also began working as a DJ, performing in clubs and at private events.

Her solo catalogue grew steadily. It includes Se perdo te (2013), I Love (2014), Lovenight (2016), Ridi (2018) and Gli occhi del perdono (2019). On 5 December 2017 she released the Christmas album A Merry Little Christmas, the first full-length album of her career, and a deluxe edition followed in November 2019. In January 2020 she released the single "LTM" with the collaboration of Myss Keta, and "Mon Amour" followed in July.

Television has been a second strand of her work. In March 2014 she coached the dance group Bad Boys on the Rai 1 talent show La pista, hosted by Flavio Insinna, and the following June she had a short cameo in the television film Ti amo troppo per dirtelo, directed by Marco Ponti. In November 2016 she appeared for nine episodes in Fabio Volo's series Untraditional, playing his ex-girlfriend. In the autumn of 2020 she was a music expert on the TV8 programme Vite da copertina.

She was a guest judge in the final of the second edition of Drag Race Italia on 8 December 2022, and in October 2023 she became a judge on the third season. On 13 November 2023 she released "The Queens", the soundtrack of that show. On 30 December 2022 she sang with Benjamin Ingrosso and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, performing "Un giorno crescerai", a song with words written by Iezzi.

From September 2024 she was a judge on the eighteenth edition of X Factor. Her single "Club astronave" came out on 10 December 2024, and in the spring of 2025 she worked with Fabio Rovazzi and Dani Faiv on "Red Flag", released on 9 May. She returned as a judge for the nineteenth edition of X Factor, and her contestant Rob, whose full name is Roberta Scandurra, won the season, which made Iezzi the winning mentor. Her single "Superstar" was released on 7 November 2025, and the list of her recordings runs on to "Stessa direzione" in 2026.