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Around WWII, popular culture began to relate to a wide range of mediatized cultural practices, having the raising music industry as its centre and essentially revolutionizing the media- and soundscapes we live in. Starting with a depiction of the socio-technological context, this contribution delves into the Italian case, and its crucial journey to mediatization from the Fascist era to the Sixties, as an exemplary trajectory for its seemingly excessive foregrounding of music and sounds within the national media culture: the canonization of popular tunes through audiovisual performances; the building of a national popular culture through the means of radio, film, the music industry and television; the formation and circulation of new forms of stardom and of fandom; the related politics of national identity.