Juanes is a Colombian rocker who turned a Latin pop icon and international famous person by subtly refusing to evolve. Staying true to his divergent roots, Juanes has included the legacy of each his electrical guitar heroes and conventional Latin types – significantly Colombian genres – in equal measure in his music. A honest and looking lyricist who’s not proof against the seduction of (and with) a bawdy play on phrases, his albums have mixed common love tales and wry revenge songs with evocative references to the darkish corners of Latin American actuality.
A long time into his profession and a seasoned veteran of the highest of the Billboard Sizzling Latin Songs chart, Juanes has had his share of teenage desires come true: He’s opened for the Rolling Stones, carried out alongside Elvis Costello, and sang “Woman” on the seventy fifth birthday tribute to John Lennon. Most mind-blowing, when he was named Latin Grammy Individual of the 12 months in 2019, Lars Ulrich, of his favourite group, Metallica, whose music “Enter Sandman” Juanes has lined, introduced him together with his award.
Colombian greats like Joe Arroyo; South American rockers like Fito Paez and Silvio Rodríguez; and different iconic singer-songwriters have been a constant affect, in fact. However what has made Juanes so nice for thus lengthy is his willingness to experiment. He’s at all times been sport to workforce with youthful artists on tracks that tread into reggaeton, lure, or rap.
Fijate Bien
The title of Juanes’ album Fijate Bien (Pay Consideration), proved to be prescient. Launched in 2000, it was produced by Gustavo Santaolalla, the Argentine musician and composer who turned a pacesetter of the Latin Various motion in the USA via recordings on his Common imprint Surco.
Juanes was already recognized in Colombia via his rock band Ekhymosis, shaped in his hometown, Medellín. On the duvet of Fijate Bien, his first solo album, he appeared able to lean into the mainstream, with quick hair and a fashion-conscious leather-based jacket. The songs strayed from the same old Latin radio sound, that includes guitar jams interwoven with the groove of Latin percussion and the tinge of folkloric accordion. Juanes’ vocals contrasted with the lighter and extra excitable tones of romantic idols of the identical period’s Latin pop explosion. The title monitor’s lyrics made reference to the land mines positioned in fields by Colombian drug traffickers to guard their crops. Juanes later took up the trigger for victims of the violence, establishing his Mi Sangre basis to advertise peace via social transformation in Colombia.
At first, Fijate Bien had solely modest gross sales. However to his shock, Juanes discovered that by 2001, his rock fusion model and mix of recent romance and social commentary had an enthusiastic following. The album was nominated for seven Latin Grammys that yr. They included Finest New Artist, certainly one of three awards that he gained.
Un Día Regular
Juanes was an artist to observe when he launched his follow-up, Un Día Regular. That album, led by the music “A Díos le Pido” would make him a star. He had by then moved to the USA, and was quickly to construct a household. It was a music of a person coming of age and taking over duty, and its trepidations. “A Dios le Pido,” (“I Pray to God”) is a plainspoken prayer for power and a peaceable future for his household and his nation, set to an addictive beat that Juanes has described as mixing rock, funk, and vallenato.
“A Dios le Pido” turned an anthem all through Latin America. Un Día Regular, the biggest-selling Spanish-language album within the U.S. in 2003, is studded with jewels that turned hits. They embody “Es Por Ti,” devoted to his spouse, and “Fotografía,” a candy love music recorded in Nashville with Nelly Furtado.
La Camisa Negra
By the point Mi Sangre was launched in 2004, Juanes had change into one of many key gamers in a decade of change within the business Latin pop sound. For “La Camisa Negra,” the album’s greatest hit, Juanes mined guasca, a gritty Colombian nation model influenced by Mexican music that turned well-liked within the Antioquia area within the Nineteen Thirties and 40s. Juanes adopted guasca’s rhythms, and likewise its typical sexual innuendo, with a decadent sauciness additional mirrored in a video for the music by which Juanes seems, perhaps, to be a pimp.
“La Camisa Negra” was banned from the radio within the Dominican Republic due to its suggestive lyrics. It ignited controversy in Italy, the place some accused Juanes of referencing Mussolini’s militia, the Blackshirts. That, as Juanes identified, was a farfetched assumption, because the music is a couple of love relationship gone incorrect.
Prime of the charts
In 2007, Juanes reached new heights together with his music “Me Enamora” from the album La Vida…Es un Ratico. Sometimes “Juanes” in sound, the endearing ode to his two daughters debuted at primary on Billboard’s Latin songs chart, the place it could spend 20 non-consecutive weeks.
Within the second decade of the brand new century, as reggaeton and different dance types dominated the airwaves and streaming platforms, Juanes has stored up his sport with the help of some next-generation collaborators. On the rhythmic ballad “El Ratico,” he spars with Kali Uchis.
Colombian reggaeton producers Sky & Mosty have been behind his 2018 single “Pa Dentro,” honoring feminine variety and, within the video, the neighborhoods of Medellín. And, for the 2019 music “La Plata,” a fusion of vallenato and membership rhythms from the visible album Mis Planes Son Amarte, he teamed with Colombian lure artist Lalo Ebratt.
Origin
In 2020, Juanes launched Origin, a set of covers of songs by a few of his greatest influences, who embody Bob Marley, tango god Carlos Gardel, Colombian metallic band Kraken, and Dominican bachata revisionist Juan Luis Guerra. By means of their songs, the album charts Juanes’ course from Latin folks music to worldwide rock and again to the sounds of his childhood.
The album opens with “Rebelión,” Joe Arroyo’s Afro-Colombian salsa basic. And Juanes additionally delivers a stupendous Spanish model of “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen, who has been an apparent affect on Juanes’ everyman-in-jeans philosophy and guitar-carrying picture.
Gris
The title monitor of Juanes’ spring 2023 album Gris (Grey), is a “personal and cathartic song” that got here out of a shaky emotional interval by which he and his spouse weathered the trials of the COVID-19 period and the repercussions from their twin evolutions over the course of a decades-long relationship. Juanes, characteristically, explores the discord and the therapeutic in a spiraling rock en español monitor.
Store Juanes’ music on vinyl now.
