Gelato al cioccolato by Pupo (1979)

Gelato al cioccolato was a hit across Europe in 1979, a soft Italo-pop ballad with a chorus about ice cream that sounds, if you want it to, like something else entirely, and Europe wanted it to. Pupo has said for years that Malgioglio wrote it after a holiday encounter with a young man in Tunisia, and that the chocolate and the salt are what they appear to be. It is the most famous reading of the song and the one the Italian press returns to every few years.

In September 2025 Malgioglio closed the case again: there is no double meaning, the inspiration was a chocolate pudding at home whose sugar and salt got mixed up, and the lover story was invented by the comedian Leonardo Pieraccioni. Pupo has not stopped telling his version, halfway between anecdote and provocation, which is why the case will not stay closed, and why a pudding is now the most contested dessert in Italian music.

Its afterlife is the dispute. No other song on this list has its two authors publicly disagreeing about whether it belongs here, and the disagreement is more entertaining than most explainers. Kobra, released a year later, is the clean case: writer confirms. Gelato al cioccolato is the Italian double entendre as a forty-year argument, and it is one of the most famous pop songs the country has produced.