JULIO IGLESIAS

Unredeemably trivial, recycled news account with no strong punches on Daly's part, and apparently no interviews. Born to the aristocracy in Madrid in 1943, Iglesias was supposed to be a lawyer when an auto accident crippled him fiercely. Paralyzed from the waist down and told he would never walk again, he remained in the hospital for two years, exercised unremittingly (he'd been an outstanding soccer player), and arose. Meanwhile, he'd learned to play the guitar to strenghten his arms and fingers and found that he had a gift for singing and songwriting. Music publishers resisted his songs until he won a big singing contest, and then his rise began as an irresistible star who has since exploded upward and shows no limits. To conquer various markets, he has learned language after language while guiding his own marketing as the Spanish Sinatra. His success, even without the US market, has been unique, with world sales beating out Elvis, Sinatra and the Beatles. The price paid is a failed marriage, his stay-at-home wife (raising three kids) complaining that she couldn't live with her perpetual-motion husband, who is forever flashing about the world seeking ever-greater popularity and younger females. He's a mystic: ""If salt is spilled on the table, he will leave; if he hears bad news, he bums the clothes he was wearing when he heard it, including his underwear and socks, and he never forgets to knock on wood before going onstage."" Iglesias has homes everywhere, the major one being in Miami, where he spends perhaps a year polishing a single release. His life-style is monumentally narcissistic and sybaritic. All of which is not to say that Iglesias has not made a tasty piece of throbbing superMuzak in Julio, his breathy, first big American-audience release, on which he sings in English, Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and German. Buy that instead.