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Playing loud music in your car is a crime: Italy’s top court

Italy’s Court of Cassation has ruled that playing music too loudly in your car is a crime.

Published: 29 February 2016 15:32 CET

Playing loud music in your car is a crime: Italy's top court

The man was convicted for playing music too loudly in his car. Photo: Elrik Solheim

The court said that a man from Sicily had “risked disturbing peoples’ sleep” when he was caught by police playing loud music in his car at night.

By the sound of it, he hadn’t just upped the volume up a notch or two when his favourite song came on.

The man clearly loved his music enough to invest in what was described as a “monster” car stereo, with three amplifiers capable of blasting music between 200 and 1500 watts.

But he could not believe his ears when he was pulled over by police as he drove along the streets in Messina one night and told he would be charged for the noise pollution.

The Court of Cassation upheld a November 2014 judgement by a court in Messina, telling the man to pay a €300 fine as well as €1,000 in legal costs, Studiocataldi.it reported, citing the court's ruling.

His stereo was also confiscated.

Although there were no complaints from residents in the area, the court said the man's behaviour risked disturbing peoples’ sleep.

He was convicted under Article 659 of Italy’s penal code, which governs noise pollution.

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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