Enrique Iglesias is no pioneer, but in his music there is a difference. He’s no pioneer because long before Hero (Interscope) put him into the music mainstream of Anglo America, pop stars of Hispanic origin had already arrived: Gloria Estefan, Jon Secada, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, and Enrique’s own father, Julio Iglesias. Yet though they were Hispanic pioneers, they weren’t musical pioneers. Their songs offer polish rather than surprise, comfort rather than adventure. To any fan of Brill Building pop, it was and remains familiar stuff.
The same cannot be said about the 13 tracks on Hero. The music is supple, and Enrique’s voice is sensuous. It’s a hefty voice but a nimble one — dreamy, even, in the manner of Europop. Since Iglesias was born in Europe, it makes sense that the continent’s supple, sensuous male singers should have influenced him. Those who have heard Pascal Obispo (also of Hispanic origin), a baby-love tenor extraordinaire and France’s biggest-selling male singer of the 1990s, will understand the context in which Iglesias’s voice — lush and liquid and full of poignant application — blossoms.
Not that there’s any need for him to justify his style to Americans. The CD’s title song has settled that. Even if it had not been written expressly in honor of the hundreds of firefighters and policemen who died in the World Trade Center, its loving melody and the sturdy reverence of Iglesias’s singing would honor the men and women of September 11. It has become our generation’s anthem. But it’s by no means the CD’s only moment of intense interest. From the opening bars of "Escape," with its plaintive keyboard riff, to the breathy pleading and diva rock of "Don’t Turn Out the Lights" and "Maybe" to the exultant melodic funk of "Love 4 Fun," the torrid I-need-you of "Love To See You Cry" and the dramatic, delicate disco of "I Will Survive," Iglesias oozes sexiness with rhythmic intensity and melodic overstatement.
Like Obispo, Iglesias replicates the sonic attributes basic to female singers without adopting falsetto or sounding the least bit fey. He begs, cries, puckers his voice, whispers, dances, makes oohs and aahs, soars high — and so does his music. He’s as single-mindedly comfortable with sex appeal as Britney Spears, and as over the top about it as Madonna. The difference appears to best advantage in "She Be the One," a hip-hop funk song in which Iglesias — unlike new-jack singers who use melisma to show off their staying power and their athletic prowess — simply curls his tongue around the melody as he lazily makes his words, all in search of the perfect drool.
The sweetness and the sweat in Iglesias’s music suggests at every point the blatant sexuality that magnetizes fans to female singers. It’s easy, in his singing, to imagine Sade expressing the undulating horniness of "Love To See You Cry," or Tina Turner conveying the incandescent pride of "I Will Survive," or Mylene Farmer voicing the otherworldly (but danceable) musings of "Escape." Yet the femininity of Iglesias’s songs remains personal to him, masculine and untranslatable. That’s why the CD’s Spanish versions of "Escape," "Don’t Turn Out the Lights," and "Hero" transcend the limitations of language. You may not understand what he’s saying, but you’ll know what he means.
With "Hero," Iglesias achieves the almost impossible, celebrating both the triumphs that the song commemorates: the solid manly resolve of the living and the passionate female caring for what can never safely be uncared about. It is certain that a song in which he addresses his "Hero" as if he were a woman cannot mean what it seems to mean. "Would you dance if I asked you to dance," he sighs. "Would you save my soul tonight?" This is how the usual disco romance commences. Yet by the time he reaches the climax, "I will stand by you forever, you will take my breath away," he’s conjured not a single dance-floor presence but an ideal into which everyone fits regardless of gender. You hear in his serenade both the resolve and the caring, his masculinity and his femininity. Both are necessary if his meaning is not to be narrowed — and how can you narrow a song whose entire direction is to move from the single to the all?
