In 1980 Pupo competed for the first time in the Sanremo Music Festival with the gold record winning song "Su di noi" ("Above us"): the song was included in his third album Più di prima ("More than before"), which was Pupo's best selling record and also included "Firenze Santa Maria Novella", a love letter to the city of Florence.

[2] In 1981 he wrote his first hit for another artist : "Sarà perché ti amo", sung by Ricchi e Poveri at the Sanremo Festival that year.

[3] Pupo competed again in the Festival in 1983 with "Cieli azzurri" ("Blue skies") and in 1984 with "Un amore grande" ("A big love"), written by Umberto Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi.

Pupo toured extensively on international stages , and in 1991 he released his first and to date only live album, Canada's Wonderland, recorded in Toronto.

In 2007, the Dutch singer André Hazes covered his song "Forse" ("Maybe") with the title "Blijf bij mi" ("Stay with me").

In 2022, after 2 years marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Pupo resumes his live international tour, entitled "40 ANNI SU DI NOI".

Australian shows in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne; those in the European Theaters of Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg and the summer ones in the Italian Squares are always sold out, triggering a participation and enthusiasm on the part of the public, which go beyond all expectations, both from Pupo and the organizers .

[7] Since 2010, Pupo hosts the annual festival of Neapolitan music Napoli prima e dopo [it], which under his tenure has averaged over three million viewers with a 20% audience share on Rai 1.

Meanwhile, Pupo started voice acting in Italian: he played Hammy in the DreamWorks animated movie Over the Hedge[8] and the titular character in the 2010 comedy Marmaduke.