Marc Anthony

Marc Anthony became a tabloid fixture after marrying Jennifer Lopez in 2004, but for decades he’s thrived as an especially successful and versatile Latin-American singer, seamlessly toggling between salsa and urban pop without ever forsaking either. Born Marco Antonio Muñiz in 1968 to Puerto Rican immigrants in New York’s Spanish Harlem, the youngest of eight children, he became involved with freestyle music as a teenager, working as a backup singer for Menudo and providing vocals for Latin Rascals productions before dropping an electronic-pop debut with Little Louis Vega in 1991, When the Night Is Over. He pivoted toward sleek New York salsa with his 1993 album Otra Nota, launching a tropical-music ascent so commanding that by 1999 he had set his sights on the mainstream with English-language pop. Steamy R&B and sultry balladry have been as integral to his work as salsa. Although he spent much of the 2000s working in the pop mainstream, he’s always moved easily between styles regardless of context, his protean, malleable voice front and center whether he’s singing pop hooks or improvising like Héctor Lavoe, the salsa great he played in the film El Cantante in 2007. He returned to salsa and reunited with his early producer Sergio George for his 2013 album 3.0, reclaiming a savvy Latin-music dominance that remained in effect on his 2019 album Opus.