Mina was born Anna Maria Mazzini in Busto Arsizio, Lombardy, in 1940 and grew up in Cremona, which is why Italians still call her "la Tigre di Cremona". She started out in 1958 singing rock and roll in clubs, and within a couple of years she was all over Italian radio and television, with a three-octave voice that could go from a whisper to a roar in one phrase.
She is known for songs like "Tintarella di luna", "Se telefonando", "Grande, grande, grande" and "Parole parole", her talking duet with Alberto Lupo. In 1978 she gave her last public concert at Bussoladomani in Versilia, recorded as "Mina Live '78", and then stopped performing live for good. She moved to Switzerland and kept releasing an album almost every year from the studio, including a best-selling duet album with Adriano Celentano in 1998, and she is the only artist to top the Italian album chart in every decade since the 1960s.