Julio Iglesias

Julio Iglesias
Background information
Birth name	Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva
Born	(1943-09-23) 23 September 1943 Madrid, Spain
Genres	Latin Latin pop dance-pop adult contemporary
Years active	1968–present
Labels	Columbia Sony
Website	www.julioiglesias.com

Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva (born 23 September 1943), better known as Julio Iglesias (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxuljo iˈɣlesjas], is a Spanish singer and songwriter who has sold over 120 million records worldwide in 14 languages, has released over 80 albums, and has more than 400 gold and platinum records certified, making him one of the best selling artists of all time and the best selling artist in Latin history.^[1][2][3][4]

Early life

Iglesias was born on 23 September 1943 in Madrid. He is the son of Julio Iglesias, Sr., a medical doctor from Ourense who became one of the youngest gynecologists in the country, and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat (1919-2002). Iglesias's paternal ancestry comes from Galicia,^[5] his paternal grandparents were named Manuela Puga Noguerol and Ulpiano Iglesias Sarria. His maternal grandparents were José de la Cueva y Orejuela (1887-1955),^[6] and Dolores de Perignat y Ruiz de Benavides,^[7] who was a native of Puerto Rico.^[8] The name "Iglesias" translates as "churches;" likewise, Iglesias is of Jewish ancestry from his maternal side, having mentioned that his mother's family name, "de la Cueva y Perignat," meaning literally "of the cave," referring to Jewish people in hiding, is a very common Jewish name.^[9][10] He alternated playing professional football with studying law at the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. In the earliest years of his young adulthood, he was a goalkeeper for Real Madrid Castilla. His professional football career was ruined when he was involved in a serious automobile accident, due to which he was unable to walk for two years.^[11] Afterwards, he said of those years, "I had more courage and attitude than talent." These were sorely tested when he was involved in that car crash—it smashed his lower spine; his legs were permanently weakened as a direct result, and they still required therapy several years later. During his hospitalization after the accident, a nurse gave him a guitar so that he could have something to do with his hands. In learning to play, he discovered his musical talent.^[12][13] After his rehabilitation, Iglesias studied for three months at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge, UK. After that, he went back to obtain his law degree at Complutense University of Madrid.^[14]

Entertainment career

In 1968 he won the Benidorm International Song Festival, a songwriter's event in Spain, with the song "La vida sigue igual" (meaning "Life Goes On The Same") which was used in the film La vida sigue igual, about his own life. After this event he signed a deal with Discos Columbia, the Spanish branch of the Columbia Records company, and released his first studio album, titled Yo Canto, or I Sing. The album spent 15 weeks in the Spanish charts, and peaked at #3.^[13] He represented Spain in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in fourth place^[15] behind Ireland's winning entry, performed by Dana.^[16] His entry was the song "Gwendolyne." Shortly after, he had a number one hit in many European countries with "Un Canto A Galicia," sung in Galician, in honour of his father, who hailed from Galicia. That single sold 1 million copies in Germany. In 1975 he found success in the Italian market by recording a song exclusively in Italian, called "Se mi lasci non vale," or "If You Leave Me, It Can't Be." Notable albums from this decade are A Flor de Piel (1974, with the European hit "Manuela"), "El Amor" (1975), and "Soy" (1973). He also sang in French; one of his popular songs in this language became "Je n'ai pas changé."

In 1979 he moved to Miami, Florida, in the United States, signed a deal with CBS International, and started singing in different languages such as English, French, Portuguese, German and other languages to his music. Two years later, in 1981, he released the album De Niña a Mujer, which he dedicated to his daughter. (She shared the cover photo with him.) From it came the first English-language hit of his career, a Spanish cover of "Begin the Beguine" which became number 1 in the United Kingdom; he also released a collection, Julio (1983). In 1984, he released 1100 Bel Air Place, the hit album which established him as a star in the English-speaking entertainment industry. It sold over three million albums in the United States alone.^[12] The first single, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before," a duet with Willie Nelson, hit #1 on the Country charts and went Top Five in the Billboard Hot 100.^[17] It also featured "All of You," in vocal duet with Diana Ross, a Top Twenty Pop hit, that climbed to #2 on the Adult Contemporary Chart with the help of a popular video.^[18]

In 1984, he had recorded and released the previously mentioned duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson. Iglesias won a Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album in the 1988 Grammy Awards for the album Un Hombre Solo (A Man Alone). He recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder on "My Love," in his Non Stop album, a crossover success in 1988. In the 1990s Iglesias returned to his original Spanish melody in Tango (1996), nominated for Best Latin Pop Album at the 1998 Grammy Awards, losing to the Romances album by Mexican singer, Luis Miguel.^[19]

Iglesias made a cameo appearance as himself on The Golden Girls as Sophia Petrillo's date on St. Valentine's Day 1989.

In 2003, Julio released his album Divorcio (Divorce). In its first day of sales, Divorcio sold a record 350,000 albums in Spain, and reached the number 1 spot on the charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Russia. In 2003 and 2004, aided by the success of his Divorcio album, Iglesias went on a ten-month world tour which took him from Europe to Asia and then on to North America, South America and Africa. More than half the shows on that tour sold out within days of going on sale. In December 2004, his Dutch girlfriend Miranda Rijnsburger and Iglesias himself recorded a duet of the Christmas song "Silent Night". The song, which was not officially released, also included a voice message from Iglesias, Rijnsburger, and their 4 young children of that time. The song was released on-line through the singer's official website and a CD was included on their Christmas card as a holiday gift from the Iglesias family to their friends and fans around the world.

In 2008, Iglesias recorded another song as a gift to his fans. The family recorded "The Little Drummer Boy" in Spanish and English and included it in the family's Christmas card. Iglesias also made investments in the Dominican Republic's eastern town of Punta Cana, a major tourist destination, where he took to spending most of the year. Indeed, Iglesias became a Dominican citizen in 2005.^[20]

In September 2006, Iglesias released a new English-language album, which he titled Romantic Classics. "I've chosen songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that I believe will come to be regarded as the new standards," Iglesias stated in the album's sleeve notes. The album featured his interpretations of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," the Wham! selection "Careless Whisper," and Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting." Romantic Classics was Iglesias's highest debut on the Billboard charts, entering at number 31 in the United States, 21 in Canada, 10 in Australia, and top spots across Europe and Asia. He returned to the studio to record songs in Filipino and Indonesian for his Asian releases of Romantic Classics which helped propel record sales in the Asian entertainment industry. Iglesias promoted Romantic Classics in 2006; it was seen all over the world on television shows. In the United States, for example, he appeared on Dancing With The Stars, where he sang his version of "I Want To Know What Love Is," Good Morning America, The View, Fox and Friends, and Martha Stewart.

In 2008, Iglesias made a music video with Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov.^[21]

In March 2011, the artist launched a new studio album called Numero 1.

Iglesias's performance of the song "La Mer" ("The Sea") is featured in the soundtrack of the 2011 film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The performance comes from a live album, which had gone out of print by the last days of December 2015, that he recorded live at the Olympia theater in Paris in 1976. At the beginning and the end of the recording, Iglesias introduces the song, and his backing musicians, in fluent French.

In October 2012, Iglesias performed a concert in Equatorial Guinea, where tickets were reportedly $1,000 each.^[21]

On 1 April 2013, in Beijing, he received two historic awards: First & Most Popular International Artist of All Time in China, an award given by Sony Music China and which was presented to Julio by the world-renowned Chinese artist Lang Lang, and the Guinness World Records for the Best-selling Male Latin Artist.^[22] As Iglesias is a composer and lyricist, some of his songs being of his own authorship and composition, on 23 April 2013, he was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, alongside Armando Manzanero and José Feliciano.^[23][24]

In 2015, as was announced, Iglesias was slated to perform a concert (complete show) for the first time with his son Julio Iglesias, Jr. in a tour in Romania, on 22 May at Sala Polivalentă in Cluj-Napoca and 2 July at Sala Palatului in the capital city, Bucharest.^[25]

Personal life

On 29 January 1971 Iglesias married Maria Isabel Preysler-Arrastía (born 18 February 1951 in Manila), better known as Isabel Preysler, a Filipina journalist and television host. Preysler, a Filipino of Spanish ancestry, was also a member of the wealthy and aristocratic Perez de Tagle family, a Filipino cadet branch of the Spanish dynasty of nobility that had held the Marquisate of Altamira since the 1600s. Together, the couple had three children: Chabeli Iglesias (born 3 September 1971), a Spanish socialite; Julio Iglesias, Jr. (born 25 February 1973), a Spanish singer; and Enrique Iglesias (born 8 May 1975), an internationally well-known Spanish singer-songwriter, actor, and record producer. In the 1970s, Iglesias and his family were extensively depicted on the front pages of international newspapers and magazines. Less fortunately, the marriage of Iglesias and Preysler ended in divorce in 1979.

Whenever Iglesias was not on tour, he was known to spend the rest of his time at his Miami residence. He bought the home in 1978 for $650,000. The south Florida mansion on the exclusive, private, Indian Creek Island property was placed on the market in 2006 for a quoted $28 million, making it one of "Ten Most Expensive Homes in the South" in 2006 according to Forbes magazine.^[26]

After his divorce, Iglesias lived together with the 22-years-younger Dutch model Miranda Rijnsburger (b. 1965), whom he married on 26 August 2010 in a small church in Marbella, Spain. They had five children: Miguel Alejandro Iglesias (born 7 September 1997), Rodrigo Iglesias (born 3 April 1999), twins Cristina and Victoria Iglesias (both born 1 May 2001), and Guillermo Iglesias (born 5 May 2007). They took up residence in the Dominican Republic, where Iglesias had acquired ownership of several hotel complexes. Among his other possessions there was the Punta Cana International Airport, of which he had acquired joint ownership with other investors. (Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta was also an investor.)^[11][27]

On 19 December 2005, Iglesias's father, Julio Iglesias Sr., died of a heart attack at the age of 90. A week before his death, it became known that the 42-year-old wife of Julio Iglesias Sr., Ronna Keith, was pregnant with their second child. Their first child, Jaime, was born on 18 May 2004. The second child, a daughter, Ruth, was born on 26 July 2006.

In 2008, after his house in Indian Creek did not sell at his asking price, he ordered it razed and said he planned to build another on that lot.^[28] In 2012 he purchased the property next door for $15 million and announced that he planned to build a new home on the combined properties.^[29][30]

Discography

• 1969 Yo Canto

Albums certificated Platinum or Diamond

References

External links

• Official website
• Julio Iglesias at the Internet Movie Database

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Julio Iglesias.

Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest
Participation 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Artists 1960s Conchita Bautista Victor Balaguer José Guardiola Nelly, Tim & Tony Conchita Bautista Raphael Raphael Massiel Salomé 1970s Julio Iglesias Karina Jaime Morey Mocedades Peret Sergio y Estíbaliz Braulio Micky José Vélez Betty Missiego 1980s Trigo Limpio Bacchelli Lucía Remedios Amaya Bravo Paloma San Basilio Cadillac Patricia Kraus La Década Prodigiosa Nina 1990s Azúcar Moreno Sergio Dalma Serafín Zubiri Eva Santamaría Alejandro Abad Anabel Conde Antonio Carbonell Marcos Llunas Mikel Herzog Lydia 2000s Serafín Zubiri David Civera Rosa Beth Ramón Son de Sol Las Ketchup D'NASH Rodolfo Chikilicuatre Soraya Arnelas 2010s Daniel Diges Lucía Pérez Pastora Soler El Sueño de Morfeo Ruth Lorenzo Edurne Barei
Songs 1960s "Estando contigo" "Llámame" "Algo prodigioso" "Caracola" "Qué bueno, qué bueno" "Yo soy aquél" "Hablemos del amor" "La, la, la" "Vivo cantando" 1970s "Gwendolyne" "En un mundo nuevo" "Amanece" "Eres tú" "Canta y sé feliz" "Tú volverás" "Sobran las palabras" "Enséñame a cantar" "Bailemos un vals" "Su canción" 1980s "Quédate esta noche" "Y sólo tú" "Él" "¿Quién maneja mi barca?" "Lady, Lady" "La fiesta terminó" "Valentino" "No estás solo" "La chica que yo quiero (Made in Spain)" "Nacida para amar" 1990s "Bandido" "Bailar pegados" "Todo esto es la música" "Hombres" "Ella no es ella" "Vuelve conmigo" "¡Ay, qué deseo!" "Sin rencor" "¿Qué voy a hacer sin ti?" "No quiero escuchar" 2000s "Colgado de un sueño" "Dile que la quiero" "Europe's Living a Celebration" "Dime" "Para llenarme de ti" "Brujería" "Un Blodymary" "I Love You Mi Vida" "Baila el Chiki-chiki" "La noche es para mí" 2010s "Algo pequeñito" "Que me quiten lo bailao" "Quédate conmigo" "Contigo hasta el final" "Dancing in the Rain" "Amanecer" "Say Yay!"
(Note: Entries scored out are when Spain did not compete)