Part one looked at Marcello Catalano, Antonello Gabelli and the two hidden voices inside Styloo. This second and final chapter closes the series with three more cases, including one singer whose own name eventually became the brand, and another whose entire public identity already belonged to someone else's history.
George Aaron: Built to Sound British
In 1984, producer Raff Todesco was looking for a new lead voice for the third single by Time and for a brand new project called Video. Working with studio owner Sandy Dian, the Todesco-Percali-Fidelfatti production trio wanted a voice close to British synth-pop singers like Alison Moyet of Yazoo, a very different register from the dance productions they usually worked on. The voice they found belonged to a young man from Vicenza named Giorgio Aldighieri.
Aldighieri sang as Video on "Somebody" and as Ram Band on "Silent Smiles," both records carrying his voice under names that gave no hint of who he was. The producers were impressed enough to eventually put him forward as a solo act in his own right, and in 1984 he released "She's a Devil" under the new stage name George Aaron, the most overtly English sounding identity he would use. More hits followed, including "Robin Hood" and "New Sensations," and unlike most of the names in this series, George Aaron stuck. He stepped back from dance music in 1992 to tour as a guitarist, returned to the scene in 2001 for a collaboration with Den Harrow on the song "Heaven," and has continued releasing music under the same name ever since.
Todesco was looking for a voice very close to that of British artists, something like Alison Moyet of Yazoo, a style quite different from the dance, electronic productions with dominant bass that the team was used to.
George Aaron
Recorded as Video and Ram Band before producers built a solo identity around his voice, the rare case of an Italo disco alias that became a lasting public name.
Silver Pozzoli: A Name of His Own, A Voice for Everyone Else
Silver Pozzoli is unusual in this series for a simple reason: he had a real public career under his own stage name. Born Silvio Pozzoli in Milan in 1953, he scored two of the genre's defining hits, "Around My Dream" in 1984 and "Step by Step" in 1985, both produced by Stefano Scalera and arranged by Romano Bais. "Around My Dream" reached number one in Germany and the top ten across several European charts, a level of recognition most of the men in this series never had.
What made Pozzoli a phantom voice was everything that happened around those two hits. Before "Around My Dream" existed, he had already been working as a studio singer since the late 1970s, lending his voice to other people's pop and disco productions without his own name attached. He recorded house and Italo dance tracks under the name Club House, including "I'm a Man / Yeke Yeke Medley" in 1987, and later released the eurodance single "Sing Sing Sing Along" on ZYX Music in 1992, a remix of his own 1985 hit repackaged for a new decade. He sang uncredited backing vocals on three records that became far bigger than anything released under his own name: Eros Ramazzotti's "Terra Promessa," recorded alongside fellow backing vocalist Marco Ferradini, Raf's "Self Control," and Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy."
And before any of his own singles existed, he was called in to record the original 12 inch version of "Mad Desire," the song attributed to Den Harrow, later re-recorded for the album version by Tom Hooker. That episode, and the full story of how Den Harrow's voice changed hands four times across the decade, is covered in detail elsewhere on this blog. For Pozzoli, it was just one studio session among many, on the way to a career that, unlike most of the names in this series, eventually carried his own.
Silvio participated as a backing vocalist on Eros Ramazzotti's "Terra Promessa." He did the backing vocals on "Self Control" by Raf and "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora.
Silver Pozzoli
Hit maker under his own name with "Around My Dream" and "Step by Step," while also recording as Club House and singing uncredited on Raf, Baltimora and Den Harrow records.
Albert One: The Names Behind the Name
Albert One, the stage name of Alberto Carpani, is the rare Italo disco frontman who really did sing his own records, a point already covered on this blog. What is less known is how many other identities ran alongside that one. His debut single came out in 1983 not as Albert One but as Jock Hattle, with the track "Crazy Family." The name was a play on the Italian word giocattolo, meaning toy, in the same spirit as the joke that gave Styloo its name. In 1999, the eurodance single "Sing a Song Now Now" appeared under yet another identity, A.C. One, which reached number six on the Spanish charts.
Carpani also lent his voice and production work to a string of group projects across the decades, including Clock On 5, Enola, Funny Twins, Tom Dollar, and X-One. Across more than two hundred recorded credits, Albert One remained the one constant public face, even as Jock Hattle, A.C. One, and a half dozen group names carried the same voice into record stores under entirely different banners.
He was known as A1, Jock Hattle, Albert One, and A.C. One. He was involved in many Italo projects such as Clock On 5, Enola, Funny Twins, Tom Dollar, and X-One.
Jock Hattle
Released a full year before the Albert One name existed, proof that even the genre's most recognizable male face started out under someone else's name.
Six men, dozens of names, and in most cases a public that danced for years without ever connecting the voice on one record to the voice on another. That was the business: a name was disposable, a studio voice was not, and the same singer could be three different acts on three different labels before the year was out.
