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Julio Iglesias

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Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva (born September 23, 1943 in Madrid) is a Spanish singer who has sold over 250 million albums in 14 languages and released 77 albums. While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads and as an iconically suave Latin gentleman, his success has continued as he crossed musical and linguistic barriers. Thus far, he has performed approximately 5,000 concerts.

Biography

Julio is the eldest son of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga from Galicia and Maria del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat, and his younger brother is Carlos. When Iglesias himself was 61, his 87-year-old father had more children. Half brother Jaime was born 18 May 2004, and half-sister Ruth on 26 July 2006. Julio's half-siblings were born from the second marriage of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and Ronna Keitt.

While attending law school in Madrid in the early sixties, for a short period goalkeeper for the Real Madrid soccer team. In 1963, his career as a football athlete was cut short after a car accident. If not for a car accident, on 22nd September 1963, he may have never had a music career:"I had a car accident, very, very strange car accident," remembers Iglesias. "I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call paraparexia, which is not a paraplegic. It's a compression in the cord, in the sense of the neck… my spinal cord, and I was very, very ill for three years." Doctors thought the young man would never walk again. But slowly, he started to recover. And to increase dexterity in his hands, he began to play the guitar. Once he recovered, he resumed his studies and he travelled to England to study English, first in Ramsgate and then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.

In June 2001 he finished his law degree at Madrid Spain's Complutense University, fulfilling the promise he made to his then 84-year-old father that he would eventually graduate after dropping out 35 years ago to pursue his music career. He received a certificate as a lawyer from Cambridge University .

During the 1970s he met the Filipina socialite and Hola! magazine journalist Isabel Preysler, and just 7 months later they married. Together they have 3 children:

Chabeli Iglesias is now a news reporter in Washington DC. Enrique Iglesias followed in his father's footsteps and is a world-famous singer. Julio José Iglesias is a model who has released two CDs. It was during the 1970s that the Iglesias family's private life became very public, with Julio and the rest of the family frequently featured on the covers of various international magazines. The couple divorced in 1978.

Since 1990 Iglesias has been with Dutch former model Miranda Johanna Maria Rijnsburger born on October 5, 1965. He revealed that Miranda accepted his marriage proposal and they will marry in the future so that their twin daughters will be bridemaids. Together they have 5 children:

Musical career

Early career to 1978

In 1968, he won the Benidorm International Song Festival, a songwriter's contest in Spain, and signed a contract with a Columbia Records Latin music label, Discos Columbia. He represented Spain at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970, finishing fourth behind Northern Irish singer Dana Scallon, and the Welsh singer Mary Hopkin. His entry was the song "Gwendolyne" which was his first recording. Notable albums from this decade include A Flor de Piel (1974, which spawned the big European hit Manuela), El Amor (1975) and Soy (1978). he has a lot of family in England, with the surname Iglesias.

Peak during 1978-1990

In 1978, he signed a contract for CBS International, adding English, French, Portuguese, German and Italian to his language repertoire. Iglesias released the album De Niña a Mujer in 1981, from which he had his first hit in the English market with a Spanish cover of "Begin the Beguine" (a No.1 hit in the United Kingdom). He also released a collection, Julio, in 1983 building his reputation.

In 1984, he released the smash hit album 1100 Bel Air Place, which gave him considerable fame in English-language markets. The album sold three million albums in the US alone, with the first single "To All The Girls I've Loved Before", a duet with Willie Nelson, reaching the top five on the Billboard Hot 100. The album also featured "All of You", a hit duet with Diana Ross.

In 1985, his father was kidnapped but found well and alive after two agonizing weeks. This prompted Julio (divorced from Preysler), to move his family to Miami, Florida, where they settled in a mansion on Miami Beach. That year he also recorded duets with Diana Ross and Willie Nelson. It was rumored in 1986 that Julio, perhaps seeking to get away from all the fame and hoopla for one week, was found walking around the streets of Cayey, Puerto Rico, after disappearing for seven days. After visiting the island of the Dominican Republic he fell so in love with it that in late 2005 he adopted legally Dominican citizenship.

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 also recorded a duet with Stevie Wonder on "My Love" from his Non Stop album which achieved crossover success in 1988.

Stories of Julio's expensive private jets, boats, and houses became legendary during that decade, and his world tours took him to many countries and continents around the world performing in many sold out concerts among the vast female populations.

1990's

In the 1990s, Julio went back to his Spanish music roots, and in 1996, he released a CD named Tango and this album received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Latin Pop Album at the Grammy Awards of 1998, losing to Romances by Luis Miguel. His son, Enrique Iglesias was also nominated that year with Vivir.

With Julio Iglesias, constantly touring and still recording to make sure the his music would be able to touch the lives of people all around the world. With singing as one of his most admirable activities he can't picture his life without it.Not only is he just trilled to be a singer but he always wants to be a singer. He loves it so much that he would rather die on stage then in a bed. He is not only proud of his achievements in life but also his youngest son Enrique's and how much his music has enhanced peoples lives. Julio is very amenable to signing autographs, although he can be a little difficult to reach sometimes, due to his and his family's security detail, which they have had since the 1985 kidnapping of Julio's father.

Since 2000

Iglesias returned to the headlines in October, 2003, when he went to Argentina and kissed show host Susana Gimenez three times during a live telecast of her show.

2003 saw the release of the Spanish album "Divorcio." (Divorce) In its first day of sales, "Divorcio" sold a record 350,000 copies in Spain; and quickly reached the #1 spot on the charts in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Russia.

The remainder of 2003 and early 2004 featured a mega 10 month world tour; which took Iglesias, fueled with the success of "Divorcio" from Europe and Asia to The United States, South America, and Africa. More than half the shows on the tour sold out within days of going on sale, showing that fans still adore Julio.

In December of 2004, Miranda and Julio recorded a duet of the Christmas song Silent Night. The song, which was not officially released, also included a voice message from Julio, Miranda, and their 4 young children. The song was released online through the singer's web page, and a CD was included in their Christmas card as a holiday gift from the Iglesias family to their friends and to fans around the world.

Julio has made important investments in the Dominican Republic's eastern town of Punta Cana, a major tourist destination, where he spends most of the year when he is not on tour.

The singer's south Florida mansion on the exclusive, security obsessed, private Indian Creek Island is currently on the market for $28 million dollars making it one of "Ten Most Expensive Homes in the South" in 2006 according to Forbes Magazine.

In September 2006 a new English album titled "Romantic Classics" was released. "I've chosen songs from the '60s, '70s and 80s that I believe will come to be regarded as the new standards," Iglesias says in the album's sleeve notes. The album features the hits "I Want To Know What Love Is", "Careless Whisper", and "Right Here Waiting".

Romantic Classics was Julio's highest debut on the BILLBOARD charts entering at number 31 in the USA, 21 in Canada, 10 in Australia, and top spots across Europe and Asia.

In late September, Julio returned to the studio to record songs in Bahasa Indonesian and in Filipino for the Asian releases of "Romantic Classics"- which helped propel sales in the Asian Markets.

Julio promoted "Romantic Classics" very heavily in the remainder of 2006, and was seen all over the world on popular TV shows, and in the USA, he appeared on Dancing With The Stars where he sang his hit "I Want To know what Love Is," "Good Morning America," "The View," "Fox and Friends," and "Martha Stewart."

Julio is currently performing several concerts in South Africa promoting his "Romantic Classics" album.

Family expansion

On May 5th, two weeks before the start of the European leg of his 2007 world tour, Guillermo, the eighth child of Julio Iglesias (fifth with wife Miranda Rijnsburger) was born at 6:12pm in Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, FL.

Discography

This list contains all albums of original material plus notable collections.

References

External links



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Last updated on Monday March 10, 2008 at 18:19:50 PDT (GMT -0700)
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