Enrique Iglesias Performing Live in Concert. This photo, “Enrique Iglesias 5” is copyright (c) 2013 Themeplus and made available under by a Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license

Enrique Iglesias is the King of Latin Pop. Enough said. He is the most successful latin singer of the last twenty years with no one even coming close to his success.

Julio Iglesias
This photo, “Julio live” is copyright (c) 2002 Coralesvip and made available under by a Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license

His father Julio Iglesias, who is one of the all time greats, has not matched his son’s level of success. Enrique, unlike his father, has done a great job of reinventing his sound. He has consistently adjusted to relevant trends in the music scene. When Bachata was topping the charts, Enrique collaborated with Romeo Santos, a Bachata and Latin music super star.

Since the popularity of urban and reggaeton music has increased Enrique has wisely worked on music projects with superstar urban acts Bad Bunny, Gente de Zona, Wisin and Zion y Lennox. His collaboration with Gente de Zona resulted in Enrique attaining the biggest hit of his career with the song Bailando.

He has done a great job of moving past ballads and grown as an artist. While Enrique’s sound has changed throughout the years his essence as an artist has always remained constant. His father Julio is a great artist and a phenomenal singer. I believe he has a better voice than Enrique as well as a great song catalog. However, he has not grown as an artist. Julio has experimented with other sounds such as salsa as in the song “Gozar la Vida” and recently with Romeo Santos in Bachata however, he has always kept himself rooted in romantic love pop ballads.

I personally think there is nothing wrong with this. If Julio feels most comfortable in sticking with what helped him achieve success in his career I’m all for it. But, I believe the sign of a truly great and innovative artist is one who is willing to change his sound and adjust to new things in music. That does not make an artist a sellout rather it makes them innovative, potentially furthering their creativity and expand their audience base. This is exactly what Enrique has done throughout his career. He has found popularity in Mexico, the Caribbean, and elsewhere in Latin America. Julio has had a long and illustrious career but, his music no longer connects to the audiences of today. Enrique continues to experiment and finds his voice in an ever changing music scene.

For a more in depth look on this blog post please check out Latinos En Music on Soundcloud.