Laura Pausini was born and raised in the town of Solarolo, Ravenna in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. She started to sing in local piano bars with her father Fabrizio, a musician and singer, when she was only eight years old. At the age of thirteen, Laura had her first recording experience with the album I sogni di Laura (Laura's Dreams), a semi-professional release produced by her father in 1987. In 1993 her career was launched when she won the prestigious Italian Sanremo Music Festival with one of her best known songs, "La solitudine". As a natural consequence, she signed a contract with Warner Music Italy to release her first professional album, Laura Pausini (1993), which was a big success in Italy, France, as well as in The Netherlands. Her second album, Laura, was released in 1994 and was such a big hit that her recording company offered her a deal to record in Spanish.
At the end of 1994, Pausini released her first Spanish album, Laura Pausini, a compilation of ten adapted versions of hits from her first two Italian albums. The album was so successful that made her a household name in the Spanish-speaking world. Her song "Se fue" was one of the most played songs of 1995 according to the Hot Latin Tracks chart of Billboard.
Following this success, Pausini synchronously released Spanish editions of her native Italian language albums: Le cose che vivi (1996), La mia risposta (1998) and Tra te e il mare (2000), were released in Spain and Latin America as Las cosas que vives, Mi respuesta and Entre tú y mil mares, respectively. She also recorded three bonus tracks in Portuguese for a special edition of her album Le cose che vivi in 1996.
Pausini's first English language single was a version of the hit "La solitudine" in 1995 titled "The Loneliness" adapted by Tim Rice, but it was not successful. In 1999 she participated in the soundtrack of the Hollywood movie Message In A Bottle (with Kevin Costner and Paul Newman) with a soulful ballad titled "One More Time", written by Richard Marx and recorded with David Foster on piano. In 2000, she recorded the theme "The Extra Mile" for the soundtrack of the movie Pokémon 2000: The Power of One.
Pausini then released her first English album, From the Inside, with Atlantic Records in 2002, working with producers Patrick Leonard and John Shanks among others, making of her first single "Surrender" saw immediate success, peaking at #1 in Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. It fared well on the Dance Radio Airplay chart. The song, "Surrender" saw some limited exposure on the Adult Contemporary radio format. In an Australian release of the album, she has two versions of "Surrender" included - the original dance version, and a downtempo version called the "Toronto Chilled Mix". Her second single "If That's Love" was also a #1 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.
Her first hits compilation came in 2001 both in Italian and Spanish: The Best of Laura Pausini: E ritorno da te and Lo mejor de Laura Pausini: Volveré junto a ti. In 2004 she released Resta in ascolto. The Spanish version of this album, Escucha, awarded Pausini a Latin Grammy in 2005 and a Grammy in 2006. This made her the first Italian female to receive such honors. The song "Víveme" was featured as the theme music to La Madrastra, a popular Mexican telenovela.
Pausini has sold over 32 million records worldwide and has over 170 Platinum albums and one Diamond album awarded to her for 13 years of career.
Of her latest album, Io canto (Spanish Yo canto), she has said: "I chose the music I listen to, in sad moments as well as in other, more special ones, those tunes that have taught me how to feel, how to love music beyond genres and styles." On the 2nd of June 2007, Laura Pausini was the first female artist to play at the San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy in front of a crowd of 70,000 spectators.
