Marc Anthony
Enrique Iglesias
At the moment, the taste is for dark meat. Poised between lilting New Age chanteuse and power diva, Dion remains somewhat unique on the world stage (though her TV show marked the beginning of a temporary semiretirement), but Martin almost instantly created a trend. If the increasing confusion between worldwide and American pop culture could make this Menudo and General Hospital alum a stateside superstar, then it can do the same for sensitive Latino puffballs Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias. Even as you read, that’s exactly what’s happening.
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Probably more important, the 31-year-old has sussed out current American teen tastes with the accuracy of a bloodhound. His latest single, “I Need to Know,” which made the Billboard top three and went gold, injects a bracing touch of rootsy Puerto Rican bolero into a Backstreet Boys-style dance cut; the album opener, “When I Dream at Night,” could be a vehicle for Madonna. But for every one of his hip dance numbers there are two or three turgid pop ballads that can’t bear the weight of their mawkish lyrics. (Random sample: “As I look into your eyes / I see all the reasons why / My life’s worth a thousand skies.”) In these numbers his technical exactitude becomes the enemy, making each breathy, overbearingly earnest phrase sound all the more phony. Of course, forced vapid turgidity worked well enough for Mme. Dion, but for a guy it may still present the barrier it did for Julio Iglesias, who only got over in this country with older women.
