Joe Barbieri, born Giuseppe Barbieri in Naples on December 14, 1973, started out as a writer and singer in a string of local groups. The Neapolitan singer-songwriter and guitarist Pino Daniele heard him, took him on, and produced his first records: Gli amori della vita mia (CGD, 1993) and Virus (Demomusic International, 1998), with a self-titled CGD album from 1994 also credited to Daniele's production. In those years he wrote "In vacanza con me" for the singer Giorgia, which appears on her 1997 album Mangio troppa cioccolata. He entered the Castrocaro festival in 1992 and the Giovani category at Sanremo in 1994 and 2000. Virus features the guitarist Antonio Onorato.

In 2003 he founded his own label, Microcosmo Dischi, which has released his records since. His 2004 album on it, In parole povere (October 28, 2004), is built on jazz and bossa nova repertoire, with Mario Venuti singing on "Pura ambra." It reached other European countries in 2007 and the United States, Canada and Asia in 2008. Maison Maravilha followed on January 16, 2009, with the Cuban singer Omara Portuondo on "Malegría." It won the Premio Lunezia and Radio France's Sélection FIP recognition, and its single "Lacrime di coccodrillo" was a duet with Chiara Civello. A live album, Maison Maravilha Viva, recorded at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, came out on April 9, 2010.

Respiro (March 20, 2012) drew guests from the Italian jazz world and beyond: pianist Stefano Bollani, trumpeter Fabrizio Bosso, the songwriter Gianmaria Testa and the Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler. It was released gradually around the world, with concerts in theatres and jazz clubs in Paris, Madrid (with Drexler) and Tokyo, and in December 2012 Yamaha issued a Japan-only best-of. In 2013 he wrote for and sang on the Danish bassist Jesper Bodilsen's double album Scenografie, where he is joined by Bollani, and appeared on the duo Musica Nuda's Banda larga (Blue Note).

On May 13, 2013, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chet Baker's death, Barbieri announced Chet Lives!, a tribute album recorded in Naples at Mad Studios, centered on a trio with trumpeter and flugelhorn player Luca Aquino and pianist Antonio Fresa. The nine tracks draw on Baker's songbook, including "But Not for Me," "I Fall in Love Too Easily," "Almost Blue," "Every Time We Say Goodbye" and "Estate," along with one original, the title song. The singer Stacey Kent and the Brazilian songwriter Márcio Faraco are guests, and Nicola Stilo, who plays fingerpicked guitar on one track, and the bassist Furio Di Castri also take part. The album came out on Microcosmo Dischi in Italy, Le Chant du Monde in France and Yamaha in Japan. On November 15, 2013, Barbieri and Kent sang together on the stage of the Olympia in Paris.

Cosmonauta da appartamento (March 24, 2015) brought in Peppe Servillo, Luz Casal, Hamilton de Holanda and La Shica, and was nominated for the Targa Tenco as album of the year. From spring 2016 he toured a duo program of Italian songwriters' songs, called Maestri, with the guitarist and producer Tony Canto. Origami (June 9, 2017) has Paolo Fresu on "Rinascimento." In 2019 he made a second tribute record, Dear Billie, to Billie Holiday, with clarinetist Gabriele Mirabassi, pianist Pietro Lussu and bassist Luca Bulgarelli. Its ten tracks are mostly Holiday repertoire, among them "I'm a Fool to Want You," "The End of a Love Affair," "Don't Explain," "When You're Smiling" and "I'll Be Seeing You," plus one new song, the title track, and the closing "Facendo i conti," first heard on Cosmonauta da appartamento. A Bluebird Reviews critic called it a mark of maturity at the fifteen-year point of his career.

Producing and arranging for others became a second line of work. In October 2019 he produced the singer Tosca's album Morabeza, and in February 2020 his arrangement of "Piazza Grande," sung by Tosca and Silvia Pérez Cruz, won the cover night at the Sanremo festival. That April he wrote and produced the charity single "Tu, io e domani" with Bosso, Bulgarelli, Sergio Cammariere and Tosca, with sales going to Italy's civil protection service during the COVID-19 emergency. Tratto da una storia vera (April 16, 2021), which he produced and arranged himself, has Carmen Consoli, Cammariere, Tosca, Jaques Morelenbaum and Bosso as guests and Mauro Ottolini on trombone for "Promemoria," and the organist Alberto Marsico appears on the song "Vedi Napoli e poi canta." In 2022 he wrote the lyrics, to music by Pasquale Catalano, of the original song "Eternità" for the television series Le fate ignoranti and marked thirty years in music with the live album Tratto da una notte vera (October 7, 2022).

Vulío ('na parola d'ammore) (April 19, 2024), an album of Neapolitan song played with the guitarists Nico Di Battista and Oscar Montalbano, earned a Targa Tenco nomination for best interpreter album. In 2025 he wrote the music for the stage comedy Malinconico, moderatamente felice, released the song album Big Bang (April 11, 2025) and performed a few summer shows titled Ammore with the writer Maurizio de Giovanni. His own concert listings for the Big Bang band name Daniele Sorrentino on bass, Pietro Lussu on Rhodes and Bruno Marcozzi on drums. In 2026 he produced Tosca's album Feminae, and an instrumental, orchestral album of film-inspired music, Cantabile, is scheduled for release on November 13, 2026. He continues to perform, with concert dates announced into March 2027.

Barbieri is first of all an Italian cantautore, a songwriter who sings his own material in Italian and Neapolitan, and the jazz in his work is a matter of repertoire and company more than of improvisation. AllMusic files him under folk and international music, and his own albums mix pop writing, Brazilian and Latin colors and Neapolitan song. The jazz thread is nonetheless sustained and deliberate: the bossa nova and jazz leanings of In parole povere, two full tribute albums to Chet Baker and Billie Holiday, a long list of guests who are working jazz players (Stefano Bollani, Fabrizio Bosso, Paolo Fresu, Luca Aquino, Stacey Kent, Hamilton de Holanda, Mauro Ottolini), and trios on the tribute records built from jazz musicians. His voice is light, close to the microphone and unforced, which a reviewer of Chet Lives! heard as carrying some of Baker's fragile charm, and a reviewer of Dear Billie described as an extra instrument beside the trio. A reviewer found the arrangements on Chet Lives! spare and intimate, which leaves room for the players. The principal influences he acknowledges through his repertoire are Baker and Holiday, Brazilian songwriting, and the Neapolitan tradition that Pino Daniele carried into pop.