An icon of romantic song and with six decades of musical career behind him, Brazilian singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos is the most successful artist in his country and one of the most important names in Latin music, with sales exceeding 140 million copies. On April 19, “O Rei” turns 80 years old.
“The muse is sometimes a situation, a person we see or hear. My main muse for making songs is life. I am a careful observer of what is happening in front of me and the stories of others. I notice life with details, as my song says; in life we have what it takes to make a song ”.
Roberto Carlos is considered the most important singer-songwriter in Brazilian music and is, without a doubt, one of the biggest names in Latin music, thanks to the hundreds of songs he has composed over his six decades of career. during which time he recorded at least one album per year until 2019.
With over 140 million records sold, a Grammy winner for Best Latin American Album in 1989, “O Rei” received the Billboard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 in recognition of a remarkable artistic career, a cultural impact that earned him and in the same year of the Latin Grammy Award as “Person of the Year” and a tribute to the Las Vegas Academy of Recordings (USA).
“Talking about Brazil means talking about Roberto Carlos,” said then-president Gabriel Abaroa, who stressed that his immense talent, passion and dedication to his art have made him one of the greatest voices and one. one of the best Latin music composers ”.
The musical legacy of the Brazilian singer-songwriter is undeniable and, by its merits, is one of the greatest representatives of the melodic song, both in Portuguese and in Spanish, due to hits such as “Amada Amante”, “Amigo”, ” Lady”. Laura ‘,’ Little Woman ‘,’ Sad and Blue Cat ‘or’ A Million Friends’.
“Love stories are always the same. The way we talk about love is different from before. The love you feel for a woman, for a person, is always the same. The way of speaking is different. There used to be a bit more lyricism and romance in love songs, “the singer-songwriter said in one of his last interviews with Efe.
ROMANTIC SONG ICON.
Roberto Carlos Braga Moreira was born in Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, Espírito Santo (Brazil), on April 19, 1941; and in his hometown there was an event that would mark his life: when he was six years old, he was hit by a locomotive and, as a result of the accident, part of his leg was amputated, for which the singer-singer was forced to wear a prosthesis.
However, neither this traumatic event nor the shyness that characterized him prevented him from soon beginning to stand out for his musical gifts, playing songs from any of his musical references on the radio.
As a teenager, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he began singing in various musical groups and met the composer Erasmo Carlos, the Brazilian’s musical partner in the best years of his career.
At the beginning of his recording, in the late 50’s, he tried bossa nova, a genre that made João Gilberto a world phenomenon, but with which Roberto Carlos failed, which he did with pop and rock due to his participation in various television programs in the 1960s.
This made Roberto Carlos an idol for young Brazilians and one of the main references of “Jovem guarda”, a cultural movement influenced mainly by rock and the “Beatle phenomenon” that swept the world in the middle of that decade. rejected by the most dedicated young people who claimed Brazilian folk music at the time.
The turning point in the Brazilian singer-songwriter’s career was marked by the prestigious San Remo Festival, one of the main musical events in the world, in which Roberto Carlos was the winner in 1968 with “Canzone per te”, although it would be another song in Italian. , “Gatto nel blu”, which would become one of the emblems of his career, especially when in 1972 he published his Spanish version.
The victory at the San Remo Festival immediately turned Roberto Carlos into one of the main icons of the romantic song, a condition that the Brazilian music legend maintains to this day, as he showed with his latest album, ” Amor sin Límites ”, published in 2019 and which includes ten songs in Spanish, including“ Esa Mujer ”, which she sings in a duet with Alejandro Sanz.
If in the 1960s his heat in the face of the 1964 military coup in Brazil was controversial, in recent years his support for current President Jair Bolsonaro has also been controversial and, throughout his career, other issues, such as the veto of some versions of his songs or the censorship of the film “Je vous salue Marie”, by Jean-Luc Godard, in 1986.
As early as 1980, his religious beliefs and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (the same for which he wears only blue and white) led him to refuse to record the song “Se eu quiser falar como Deus”, which Gil had composed for him. , because the lyrics contained words like “devil” and “horrible”, according to historian Paulo César de Araújo in the singer’s biography, which led to a long legal battle.
“OCD makes me a patient, demanding and very detailed person with the things I do. I correct and repeat as many times as necessary until I am satisfied, that’s why I think that sometimes this problem helps “, said the artist in this regard.