Juanes

Colombian singer-songwriter Juanes was born Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez on August 9, 1972, in Medellin. Having grown up in a city heavily marked by the drug trade, Juanes witnessed many atrocities that led him to develop the strong social consciousness that would later characterize his creative output. He rose to fame in his native Colombia through his rock band Ekhymosis but it wasn't until the band split up and he released his first solo album in 2000 that his career really took off. His debut album Fíjate Bien won three Latin Grammys and its follow-up Un Dia Normal went platinum across all the major Latin markets, spending 92 weeks on the Billboard Latin Charts. Juanes has gone on to sell over 15 million albums and his popularity, coupled with his relentless campaigning work on behalf of Columbian social issues (landmine clearance in particular) led Time Magazine to cite him as "one of the world's 100 most influential people." His campaigning work has not been without controversy however, with efforts to promote peace in Cuba through a concert met with criticism from exiled Cubans who believed the singer was inadvertently propping up the Cuban government and threats from extremists caused the concert to be canceled. Over the following decades, albums such as Un Día Normal (2002), Mi Sangre (2004), La Vida... Es Un Ratico (2007), P.A.R.C.E. (2010), and Loco de Amor (2014) solidified his status as one of the most successful singer-songwriters in Latin pop music, accumulating numerous awards and accolades along the way. In 2017, his seventh studio album Mis Planes Son Amarte won the Latin Grammy for Best Pop/Rock Album. He would repeat the feat once again in 2021 with Origen, a collection of cover songs that paid tribute to the artists that shaped his work. Vida Cotidiana, his tenth LP, was released in 2023 and found him returning to the rock-oriented sound of his first albums.