Enrique Iglesias (48) has announced his last album “Final Vol. 2” for March 29th. His long career began around 25 years ago with numerous Spanish and English-language hits. What’s next for the musician, who is number one on Billboard’s “Greatest Latin Artists of All Time” list, after his final record?
The singer, born in Madrid in 1975, is the son of the Spanish music star Julio Iglesias (80) and the Filipino-Spanish journalist Isabel Preysler (73). At the age of eight, he moved to Miami with his then-divorced father. In 1995, Iglesias released his Spanish-language, self-titled debut work. In 1997 he won a Grammy Award for “Best Latin Pop Album”. This was followed by Grammy nominations for the second album “Vivir” and the third work “Cosas del Amor”. From 1999 Iglesias devoted himself to English music and released “Enrique”. The album was a huge success and included the hits “Bailamos”, “Rhythm Divine”, “Be with you” and the Whitney Houston duet “Could I Have This Kiss Forever?”. He had long since risen to the ranks of top stars and was even allowed to appear at the Millennium Super Bowl in 2000 with Christina Aguilera (43), Phil Collins (73) and Toni Braxton (56).
On his next album “Escape” (2001), the single “Hero” was a worldwide success and left languishing fans. The time became a personal turning point for Iglesias. Tennis player Anna Kournikova (42), who became his partner, starred in the music video for “Escape”. “When we met – even though she came from the sports world – we kind of hit it off,” Iglesias said in a 2023 People interview. “She knew what my world was like and vice versa. This understanding helped us a lot. We started to get closer little by little and the connection became stronger and stronger.” The two now have three children, the twins Lucy and Nicholas, who were born in 2017, and Mary, who was born in 2020.
The next Spanish-language album “Quizas” followed in 2002, and another English-language album, “7”, in 2003. A four-year break from music did not affect Iglesias’ success. The English album “Insomniac” (2007) contained the hit “Do You Know? (The Ping Pong Song)”, and the song “Can You Hear Me” became the official song of the European Football Championship in Austria in 2008. From 2010 onwards, Iglesias apparently no longer wanted to make a decision and released two bilingual albums, “Euphoria” and “Sex and Love”. For both records he joined other top stars in the music world, including Ludacris (46) for “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You / I’m Lovin’ You)” and Sean Paul (51) for “Bailando”. The latter track is considered his most successful release to date.
Once again after seven years without an album release, Iglesias rang in 2021 with the bilingual work “Final (Vol. 1)”, which he will end with the upcoming album. After twelve studio albums, no more will follow. But even before the release of “Vol.1”, the singer assured his fans that this did not mean the end of his career. “I’ll never stop writing songs because I love writing songs, but I’ll do it in a different way, meaning they don’t necessarily have to be packaged as an album,” he said in a conversation with Ricky Martin (52) and Sebastián Yatra (29).
He proved that he still wants to be on stage in 2023 and early 2024, when Iglesias went on a joint “Trilogy” tour with Pitbull (43) and Ricky Martin. Among other things, with the duets “Fría” with Yotuel (47), “Asi Es La Vida” with the Argentinian singer María Becerra (24) and the single “Space in My Heart”, a duet with US country singer Miranda Lambert (40) , Iglesias gave a foretaste of the final work in recent months. Apparently it will once again show its range from danceable pop songs to emotional ballads.
