Francesco Guccini (Italian: [franˈtʃesko ɡutˈtʃiːni] ; 14 June 1940 – 6 August 2026) was an Italian singer-songwriter, writer and actor. During the five decades of his music career he recorded 16 studio albums and collections, and 6 live albums. He was also a writer, having published autobiographic, and hardboiled novels, and a comics writer. Guccini also worked as an actor, soundtrack composer, lexicographer and dialectologist. Guccini moved to Pàvana during World War II, then returned to Modena where he spent his teenage years and established his musical career. His debut album, Folk beat n. 1, was released in 1967, but his first success was in 1972 with the album Radici. He was harshly criticised after releasing Stanze di vita quotidiana and answered his critics with the song "L'avvelenata". His studio albums production slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s, but his live performances continued being successful. His lyrics have been praised for their poetic and literary value and have been used in schools as an example of modern poetry. Guccini gained the appreciation of critics and fans, who regard him as an iconic figure. He has received several awards for his works; an asteroid, a cactus species and a butterfly subspecies have been named after him. The main instrument in most of his songs is the acoustic guitar. He was a left-wing and anti-fascist intellectual, close in spirit to the communist and socialist traditions of the Italian left but independent from any political party. He supported social justice, workers' rights, secularism, civil liberties, and resistance to authoritarianism. His worldview was shaped by the memory of the Italian Resistance, the post-war left-wing culture of Emilia-Romagna, and the social movements of the late 1960s. His songs often criticised fascism, inequality, hypocrisy, consumerism, and the abuse of power.