Italian singer and songwriter Raffaele Riefoli, better known as Raf, was born 63 years ago in Margherita di Savoia, is married and has 2 children.
In the early 80s, Raf lived in London prior to initialising his music career, and his first album was recorded in the English language. It included the international hit ‘Self Control’, which was a number one in his native Italy and Switzerland and was also very successful in Germany and Austria.
An interesting fact is that American singer Laura Branigan recorded a cover version of Raf’s ‘Self Control’ at the same time Raf released his, and which was also a worldwide hit.
Raf had other English songs like ‘London Town’ and ‘Hard’ amongst others, but they did not prove as successful as ‘Self Control’. In 1987, he decided to re-release his first album, but it failed to chart.
More albums followed which featured tracks that topped the Italian charts like ‘Cosa Restera` degli Ann 80’, ‘Ti Pretendo’, ‘Oggi un dio non ho’, ‘Due’, ‘Il Battito Animale’, ‘Stai con Me’ and ‘Infinito’.
As a songwriter, Raf wrote songs for other artists, in particular ‘Si puo` dare di Piu`’, which was the winning entry of the 1987 San Remo Music Festival, sung by Umberto Tozzi, Gianni Morandi and Enrico Ruggeri. He also wrote the hit ‘Gente di Mare’ in collaboration with Umberto Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi and sung it in duet with Umberto in the 1987 Eurovision Song Contest. It arrived in third place.
To date, Raf recorded 19 albums and 43 singles and 4 songs as a featured artist.