Zappacosta
Person · male · Canada · Sora · born 1953
Canadian singer-songwriter
Timeline
1950s
Biography
Biography
Alfredo Peter "Alfie" Zappacosta (born July 5, 1953), also known by just his surname, is an Italian-born Canadian musician.
Career
Zappacosta's first band was Surrender, a five-piece group that recorded three albums in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1984, he recorded his first solo album, Zappacosta, which contained the hit singles "Passion" and "We Should Be Lovers". As a result, he won the Juno Award for "Most Promising Male Vocalist" the same year.
In 1985, Zappacosta lent his voice to the Canadian charity song "Tears Are Not Enough", produced by David Foster, singing the lines "Maybe we could understand the reasons why" in the fifth stanza, with Dalbello.
His second album, A to Z, was released in 1986 and featured the hit singles "When I Fall (In Love Again)" and "Nothing Can Stand in Your Way". Following this, a Zappacosta song entitled "Overload" was added to the 1987 Dirty Dancing soundtrack, one of the biggest-selling soundtracks of the 1980s. Later that year, Zappacosta sang the radio commercial jingle for Pizza Nova.
A third album, Quick!...Don't Ask Any Questions, was released in 1990, before he took time off to hone his vocal and guitar skills. He also pursued acting in various stage performances, and had a role in the 2005 Canadian movie Halo (not to be confused with the movie about the Microsoft videogame of the same name).
Zappacosta has subsequently released more albums, including 2004's Start Again, which contains reworked versions of some of his songs from the 1980s.
Studio albums
Zappacosta (1984)
A to Z (1986) (#90 CAN)
Quick!... Don't Ask Any Questions (1990)
Innocence Ballet (1995)
Dark Sided Jewel (1998)
Start Again (2004)
Bonafide (2008)
Blame It on Me (2010)
Once Upon a Time (2013)
No Avoiding Cliches (2015)
Strings Attached (2018)
Saved (2021)
Live albums
At the Church at Berkeley (2008)
Live at the Blue Frog Studios (2012)
Compilation albums
Over 60 Minutes with... Zappacosta (1987)
with Surrender
Surrender (1979) (#96 Canada)
Single – "Find Your Way" (#86 Canada)
No Surrender (1982)
Single – "Start Again" (#38 Canada)
Singles
"We Should Be Lovers" (1984)
"Passion" (1984)
"Start Again" (1985)
"When I Fall (In Love Again)" (1986) [CAN #44]
"Turn It On" (1986) [CAN #95]
"Nothing Can Stand in Your Way" (1986) [CAN #42]
"I Think About You" (1986)
"Overload" (1988)
"Nothing to Do with Love" (1990)
"Letter Back" (1990) [CAN #24]
"I'll Be the One" (1991) [CAN #45]
"Simple Words to Say" (1991) [CAN #44]
"Show Me" (1995) [CAN #67]
"Orlanda" (1995)
"And We'll Dance" (2004)
"Start Again" (2004)
Discography & profile
Normalised profile
Percentiles are computed over every artist in the database, so a tier-3 artist can still sit in the 95th percentile on a single axis.
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 6 | 38.9th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 0 | 0th |
| Studio albums | 0 | 0th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 1 | 40.6th |
| Recording span (years) | — | no data |
| Genres | 1 | 56th |
Percentiles are computed at render time; missing values mean the artist has no data on that axis.
Discography (0 release groups)
No discography rows stored yet
MusicBrainz enrichment for this artist is still pending. Release groups appear here once it runs.
Stats & PK
Percentile within all 23,672 published artists.Put Zappacosta head-to-head →
| Metric | Value | Percentile |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia language versions | 6 | 38.9th |
| Spotify monthly listeners | — | no data |
| Release groups in DB | 0 | 0th |
| Studio albums | 0 | 0th |
| Awards recorded | 0 | 0th |
| Timeline events | 1 | 40.6th |
| Recording span (years) | — | no data |
| Genres | 1 | 56th |
Awards & honours
Where this record comes from
core—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q147453genre—wikidata · CC0 · retrieved 11 October 2026
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q147453seed-list—wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappacostabiography—wikipedia-en · CC BY-SA 4.0 · retrieved 10 October 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zappacosta
Why this artist is in the database
- List of Canadian musicians
Tier rule: curated genre/region list
Image: no portrait (not displayed: the licence credit is missing)
Wikidata: Q147453 · MusicBrainz: 7dcc46d5-fe56-459e-93cb-a45397edc085
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