At 71 years old, Julio Iglesias is still very much a ladies’ man.
“You know I like to talk about sex, so we need to be alone,” he jokes, shooing away his rep to allow for privacy between reporter and subject.
Iglesias looks fit and tan in his signature look, a crisp white linen button-down and off-white cotton trousers, while sipping cafe con leche in the living room of his North Miami Beach home. The palatial Florida estate overlooks a golf course on one side and the ocean on the other.
A Bentley and a Rolls-Royce are parked outside, and, kept at the ready, there also is a private plane — he has owned Gulfstreams for three decades, including his current long-range 550 — one of the symbols of Iglesias’ standing as the original international star of Latin music.
Now Iglesias is preparing for the Sept. 25 release of Mexico, his first Spanish-language album in 12 years (a period in which he recorded in English, French and Italian). Mexico revisits some of that country’s most beloved standards — but reimagined with contemporary arrangements that defy the reliance on mariachis and other traditional instrumentation for such repertoire.
The singer recognizes that this album of classic Mexican songs arrives at a time when a U.S. presidential candidate has maligned the nation. “It can teach people like Donald Trump why Mexico is not a country of undesirables,” says Iglesias. “It’s an incredibly beautiful country with historic culture.”
According to Nielsen Music, Iglesias has sold 5.4 million albums in the United States since 1991. Guinness World Records in 2013 recognized him as the world’s best-selling male Latin artist, noting his 80 albums in 14 languages and global sales of more than 250 million. Sony Music, his longtime label, cited those sales in 2014 in London, where he received a company award naming him “the most successful Latin artist of all time.”
“Julio is the man who wooed the world with a Hispanic sound,” says Emilio Estefan, co-founder with his wife, Gloria, of Miami Sound Machine. Their Latin pop hits topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the late 1980s, after Iglesias first broke through to the pop mainstream. “When we were all trying to push our way to success, Julio was one of the keys that opened the door.”
But Mexico will be the last studio album of his career. “It takes too much time,” says Iglesias, who produced the album himself, adding that he never asks for outside opinions when he’s recording.
“One can make mistakes in these projects, and I’ve made many, but these last albums are my legacy. It’s like film. Your last effort is what remains.”
Iglesias’ legacy also can be found inside his home, which is alive with the energy of his family: his second wife, Miranda (they married in 2010, after two decades together), and their five children, ages 8 to 18, plus a menagerie of eight dogs and seven cats. Iglesias also has three grown children — Julio Jr., Chavely and Enrique — from his prior marriage to Isabel Preysler.
The youngest child, Guillermo, passes by en route to the kitchen, and his father snags him. “He’s a drummer,” says Iglesias. “Play, play,” he urges, and Guillermo obliges, laying down a groove using his legs as a drum kit.
“He has swing,” says Iglesias, all proud papa, although he admits he’s not the kind of dad to go to ball games or teacher conferences.
With his adult children, he says, “I always spoke to them about that personal ambition, about jumping over the hurdles life puts before you. And I always drilled into them the importance of success — something I also drilled into myself and into everyone around me.
“There are young, marvelous artists who are better than me,” he continues. “But I feel like their dad, because I taught them how to negotiate contracts with labels, to have their private plane, that you could make money with music. I represent what modern Latin music is.”
Along the way, Iglesias also has been generous to members of his team. The Grammy-winning recording engineer Carlos Alvarez recalls that after working on Iglesias’ landmark 1996 album, Tango, he found three red convertibles parked in the singer’s driveway.
“There were two Camaros — one for me and one for the other engineer. The Corvette was for the producer,” says Alvarez, who drove his Camaro for more than 10 years. “It was Julio’s way of saying thank you. He always has these super gestures.”
Iglesias never meant to be a singer. Born in Madrid to a prominent family (his father was a well-known physician), he was a law student who also played soccer semiprofessionally as a goalie for Real Madrid’s junior team. Then in 1962, at age 19, an early-morning traffic accident left him in a hospital bed, partially paralyzed for nearly three months.
“Suddenly you’re in this dark world where there is no positive spirit,” Iglesias remembers. “And you ask yourself, ‘Why me?’ And then you find you can move one finger. And then another.”
One of the nurses, a member of the university chorus, gave him a guitar to help rehabilitate his hands. Iglesias started plucking at the strings, trying out some lyrics: “There’s always someone to live for, someone to love … In the end, things remain, people leave; life goes on,” he wrote.
His musings became “La Vida Sigue Igual (Life Goes On),” a simple, catchy tune whose universal message struck a chord. It became a massive European hit, winning Iglesias first place at the Benidorm Song Festival in July 1968. By the end of that year, he had signed a record deal with Columbia in Spain.
Iglesias’ good looks, understated manner and distinctive voice made him a global sensation, and he was soon singing not only in Spanish but also German, Japanese, French and even Chinese.
Willie Nelson, in his memoir, describes when he first heard Iglesias on the radio in the early ’80s and sought to sing a duet with him. “To All the Girls I Loved Before” became a top five hit on the Hot 100 in 1984. The song appeared on Iglesias’ breakthrough English-language album, 1100 Bel Air Place (the address of his former home in Los Angeles), which also included duets with Diana Ross and The Beach Boys. The album has been certified for sales of 4 million copies by the RIAA.
And with it, Iglesias became America’s top-selling Latin singer.
During a concert tour in 2013, Iglesias performed at Mexico City’s Auditorio Nacional. The idea for the new album arose over tequila with Sony Mexico president Roberto Lopez after the show.
Iglesias has a long history with Mexico. In 1973, newspaper El Heraldo named him the year’s best new artist, and his albums have earned multiple platinum sales certification in the country.
Most important, he says, recording these songs from Mexico allowed him to still be able to dream and to learn. “Really, my life is the stuff of film,” he reflects. “I was a skinny runt, and women thought I was hot. I couldn’t sing worth a damn, and I’ve sung with everyone. But the biggest lesson of my life is, I learned to learn. And because of that, with a lot of will and a little talent, at 71, I can still sing with the same hope and passion I had 30, 40 years ago.”