Enrique Iglesias: a new romance and a new album

13 years and 8 albums ago Enrique Iglesias was only at the beginning of his way to fame. Time makes strange things happen. If everyone was talking about Enrique as about Julio Iglesias’ son, today it is necessary to explain to young people that Julio is Enrique’s father. The Spanish pop artist’s songs were at the tops of the world’s hit parades on the turn of the centuries, they could e heard at every party and the tickets of his concerts got sold out several months before the set date. 2007 saw Iglesias returning after a 4 year hiatus with the album Insomniac on which he added R&B elements to his Spanish passion. The fans remained delighted and the singer restored his reputation after rather poor 2003’s record Seven. After that the artist continued performing on stage and working in the studio, a new serious relationship started and probably inspired him to write new material. Finally this July he releases his ninth work Euphoria, a very colorful summer album full of pleasant surprises.

Danceable and slow compositions in two languages on Euphoria

Unwilling to stay apart from the fashionable music trends Enrique has invited producers RedOne (Lady Gaga and Mary J. Blige) and Mark Taylor (Nelly Furtado, Britney Spears) to work on the album. Yet Iglesias could not do with just stylish and trendy arrangements – if you look at the track-list you will see that a good half of Euphoria consists of collaborations with the most popular artists of the present day. Thus, the album opens with a danceable duet with Pitbull, I Like It, the second single ready to become a club hit, as well as the song One Day At A Time performed with Akon and refined with melodious keyboards. The third single Heartbeat pleases with Nicole Scherzinger’s vocals and reminds of the hits from the album Escape, whereas Usher helps to double the erotic sensuality on the track Dirty Dancer. The Spanish duo Wisin & Yandel join their compatriot on the fourth single No Me Digas Que No, one of the most passionate compositions on the record. It is interesting that the first single is a song in Spanish, Cuando Me Enamoro, recorded with Juan Luis Guerra and conquering with its romantic mid-tempo tune. Besides contagious danceable song the album also offers emotional ballads – the Spanish Ayer pleases not only with the beautiful melody but with a very harmonious arrangement, too, and the English Heartbreaker and Coming Home sound more sincere than ever. The album closes with a very joyful version of the song No Me Digas Que No (Solo), leaving the listeners with the best mood.

Several one-hundred-percent hits

Although all Enrique Iglesias’ English-language albums offer the Spanish versions of the songs, Euphoria is his first full-length bilingual album and his first one on the label Universal Republic. The songs in English are based on the ultra contemporary dance beats – the renowned producers’ work is obvious. In order to preserve the piquant flavor of the Spanish songs Enrique collaborates once again with long-time producer Carlos Paucar. As one could expect, the collaborations never distract your attention from Iglesias, they only underline his original manner of performance. As before, the protagonist of his up-tempo songs is a passionate romantic guy fond of dancing while in the ballads it is a more sincere, vulnerable man suffering deeply from pain of losses and breakup. On the whole the record Euphoria is a worthy continuation of the album Insomniac, there are several one-hundred-percent hits on it, and the first single may even make Spanish music more popular than when it was in times of Iglesias-the-father.

Alexandra Zachernovskaya
09.07.2010