Julio Iglesias 1 - (2-CD, 38 Tracks)

(Sony) 38 track version ! - Essential Best-Of Double incl. duets Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Dave Koz, Sting, Dolly Parton a.o. 1984-2000.

This has been a unique project in my life. Being able to go back and sing songs from a time when technology hadn't yet met the digital age.

I especially want to thank my dear friend, Ramon Arcusa, who was the producer of many of these songs between 1978 - 1995. Thanks also to the sound engineers and musicians who contributed their talent to this project, particularly the engineers Carlos Alvarez and Alberto Sanchez, and to Humberto Gatica for his supervision.

 My thanks as well to my dear friend Denis Handlin for all these years and Afo Verde, for his involvement and support in the project, together with his team from Sony Latino: Fernando Cabral, Paul Forat and Isabel de Jesus, Barry Fiedel, Jorge Fonseca and Socorro Cadena, who believed in the project and never gave up on it.

Very special thanks to my dear friend Doug Morris. I cannot forget my friend and lawyer, Joel Katz, for his friendship and help at this stage of my life.

My greatest thanks to my wife, Miranda, and my eight children, for so many years of love and affection. And finally to all my dearest fans, without whom this project would not have been possible...

Thank you!
Julio Iglesias 

Julio Iglesias

It's Julio Iglesias' world, the rest of us just make love in it. Clearly it takes a true star to seduce an entire planet with song. More than anyone else on earth, Iglesias has managed to touch lives on a global level, selling hundreds of millions of his records in the process. My Life: The Greatest Hits--the first comprehensive retrospective of Julio's many worldwide smashes-- could be subtitled All The Songs We've Loved Before except no single collection could contain every single Iglesias favorite. After all, this is a man who since writing his first hit thirty years ago has gone on to earn more than fifteen-hundred gold and platinum awards. Still, this compilation does collect the crème de la crème from his impressive body of work and even offers a few welcome hints of things to come in a career which finds Iglesias still at the height of his creative powers.

Think of My Life: The Greatest Hits as the first half of a fine book--the heartening story of a man who has overcome serious adversity to conquer the earth in a manner no were world leader ever could.

"I'm just a lucky guy with a little voice and amazing fans," this master of self-deprecation offers with a laugh and a winning grin. The arc of Iglesias' success story should be familiar to most of his dedicated following. An exceptional athlete, the young Spaniard was goalkeeper for the world famous Real Madrid team when a tragic car accident left him near death and paralyzed at nineteen. For three years he underwent the difficult process of recuperation. Fortunately for him and for us, a physician's assistant in the hospital gave Iglesias a guitar to help lift his spirits. He started to write songs, and after recovering, he studied law before dedicating himself to music full-time.

"I think having that experience changed the direction and the philosophy of my life," Iglesias says. "Going through all that made me who I am today. I was a sporting, flirty young guy before that. All that pain gave me a sensitivity to everything around me. I became a poet without writing, a singer without singing." From the most serious sort of adversity came art, and from that art came almost unimaginable fame and wealth. Before he even became a star in America with his multi-platinum 1984 album 1100 Bel Air Place, Iglesias was already in the Guinness Book of World Records as a record seller.

Listening to this eclectic set of songs in wildly varying styles, languages and musical approaches, one realizes that Iglesias is an artist with great respect for all genres, but one who refuses to be bound to any single one. By continuing to challenge himself and staying at the top of the game for decades now, Iglesias has become a one-man genre, imitated but never duplicated. In the end, Iglesias believes his success is all about that instant rapport with the audience. "We singers are not sellers of voice, we are sellers of style, a style that we hope is unique. We are selling communication."

These are the songs that made Julio Iglesias instantly recognizable, and the songs that found him pushing himself in new directions. Finally, these songs on My Life: The Greatest Hits are united by Iglesias' passion, a passion for the power of the song, a passion for the connection between the singer and the audience, even a passion for passion itself. Here is what the man himself has to say about these songs today: