Lucero

Lucero is one of Mexico's most iconic performers. A best-selling singer/songwriter, she is globally renowned for her recordings of rancheras, mariachis, and pop songs. Further, she is an award-winning actress of screen and stage, as well as a popular television host. Lucero's professional career began at age 11 performing on a Mexican children's variety program. She started acting in telenovelas in 1982 and released her debut album, Te Prometo, as Lucerito the same year. Her first charting album was 1990's Con Mi Sentimiento. 1991's Lucero de Mexico went Top 40 in the U.S. Virtually every studio outing that decade charted, including 1998's multi-platinum Cerca de Ti. 2004's Cuando Sale un Lucero and 2006's Quiéreme Tal Como Soy both hit internationally. 2010's Indispensable featured "Dueña de Tu Amor" the hit theme for Soy Tu Dueña for her telenovela. 2017's Brasileira offered bossas and sambas in Portuguese. Also in 2017, she released the first part of her Sinaloan trilogy, Enamorada con Banda, followed by 2018's Mas Enamorada con Banda and 2019's Sólo Me Faltabas Tú. The boxed retrospective 20y20 followed a year later. Lucero was born Lucero Hogaza León in Mexico City. From the time she could walk and talk, she sang and danced. Her mother Lucero León, a former performer herself, trained her and has managed her career, which Lucero began at 11, performing with her guitar on the variety show Alegrías de Mediodía in 1980. Two years later, she played the title role in the telenovela Chispita and won an industry award as best new actress. As a teen, she appeared in the film Coqueta, which also featured Pedro Fernández, and earned the nickname "Queen of the Telenovelas," acting in no less than nine, including Cuando Llega el Amor, Los Parientes Pobres, and Lazos de Amor. While her career as an actress made her a nationally beloved cultural figure, Lucero's musical career, which began with her 1982 debut Te Prometo, ran concurrently and was arguably more successful. During the '80s, she appeared in no less than seven films and released six albums as well as a dozen EPs and singles as Lucerito. They ranged across the musical spectrum from synthesized pop to traditional rancheras, mariachis, and romanticos. With 1990's Con Mi Sentimiento, she adopted the name "Lucero." 1993's Lucero sold more than 800,000 copies in Mexico alone and made inroads at radio in the Southwestern United States. 1995's Siempre Contigo peaked at number 15 on the Top Latin Albums charts in the U.S. and toured in Mexico and South America. In 1999 she released Un Lucero en la México, her first live offering. It included one disc of pop songs and one of Mexican Regional songs; it was certified gold out of the box and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. 2004's Cuando Sale un Lucero, her debut for EMI, was certified gold and subsequently platinum. The same year she appeared as Esperanza in director Alfonso Arau's biopic Zapata: El Sueño de un Héroe, at the time the most expensive Mexican movie ever produced -- its opening was also the highest grossing in Mexican history. 2006's Quiéreme Tal Como Soy contained reworked versions of some of her greatest hits (written by Rafael Pérez Botija) and covers by Rocío Dúrcal and José José. 2010's Indispensable, her first studio set in four years, was among her most ambitious and successful outings. Released during the same year she acted in the popular telenovela Soy Tu Dueña, its first single, "Dueña de Tu Amor," was the closing theme for the show and propelled Lucero to the upper rungs of the Mexican charts, and placed in both the United States and Europe. While 2011's Mi Secreto de Amor hit the Top 40, 2011's Un Lu Jo (a duet album with Joan Sebastian) topped the Mexican Regional Albums chart in the U.S.; it also peaked at number three on Mexico's national chart. A collection of romantic ballads, Aquí Estoy, appeared on streaming charts in 2014. Lucero released Enamorada con Banda in 2017, a set of popular hits recorded in the banda style, to great acclaim. It topped the national charts and landed inside the Top 40 on the U.S. Latin Albums chart. To honor fans in Brazil and Portugal, she also released Brasileira on Fonovisia that year; a collection of her own songs and covers of bossas and sambas sung entirely in Portuguese. 2018's Mas Enamorada con Banda charted and sold with equal success as its thematic predecessor. In 2019, she and producer Luciano Luna teamed for a third banda collection, Sólo Me Faltabas Tú, that proved no less successful commercially. In 2020, Lucero held a virtual press conference announcing the release of the boxed retrospective 20y20, a four-disc set that covered her 40 years in music to date. She explained, "The first two discs cover the transition from girl to young woman and the second, the last 20 years as an experienced artist, mother, and mature woman." In 2021, Lucero reunited on-stage with ex-husband Manuel Mijares for the streaming concert Siempre Amigos. In 2022 she released no less than nine singles -- including four very different versions of her pop hit "Los Ricos Tambien Lloran." ~ Heather Phares & Thom Jurek