Paulo Gonzo

With a career which spawns over three decades, Paulo Gonzo has been one of the leading lights in the Portuguese popular music scene. And for someone who has relied his career mostly on the strength of adult contemporary-friendly ballads, it's somehow puzzling to know how he made his start as the lead singer of the Go Graal Blues Band, whose style of music was almost perfectly encapsulated on their name, with a few dashes of vintage R&B thrown in for good measure. After releasing four English-sung albums in the span of five years, the band went their separate ways, paving the way for Gonzo's solo career. Released in 1984, the sentimental "So Do I" became a summer smash. Two years later, "Somewhere in the Night" paved the way for his debut solo album, My Desire, which became quite successful on the strength of original material written by Dan Hartman and Daniel Lavoie, among others. A year later, one-off single "Stay" became another ballad smash, with enough sales to secure it a silver certification. In 1988, Gonzo released the maxi-single "My Girl/She Knocks Three Times," which bombed, even on the strength of both songs being covers of all-time classics by the Temptations and Otis Redding, respectively. Another one-off single, 1989's "Can't Be with You," fared no better. Probably on the strength of these failures, Gonzo only resurfaced in 1992, with an album which marked a turning point in his career, by deciding to sing in Portuguese for the very first time. The resulting Pedras da Calçada didn't quite set the charts on fire at the time, but included what was to become his signature song, "Jardins Proibidos." After 1993's My Best (a compilation of his greatest English recordings), Gonzo released Fora d'Horas, which gained gold status through the airplay success of...