Olga Tañón is a best-selling, award-winning Puerto Rican tropical and Latin pop singer, songwriter, and set designer who, since 1992, has sold millions of recordings across the globe. Throughout her career, “La Mujer de Fuego” (the woman of fire) has been awarded seven gold and five platinum albums. She was the first female Puerto Rican artist to be certified gold in the U.S., selling more than 500,000 units of the 1996 album Nuevos Senderos. She is the winner of numerous Grammy and Latin Grammy awards, and has placed nearly 40 singles on the Hot Latin Songs chart. She is the artist with the highest number of Premio Lo Nuestro awards (more than 30). She has been honored by the Salon of the Fame of the Latin Songwriters with the “La Voz de La Musa” Award and the prestigious Hispanic Award for the Arts. Tañón has also used her voice and music for social justice: She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, has promoted immigration reform, and has been influential through her participation in the Concert of Peace Without Borders in Cuba in 2009 with an attendance of 1.6 million people — the third concert with the largest audience in the world. She returned in 2015 to give two historical concerts — Promesa Fulfilled — with over a million attendees.
The youngest of four children, Tañón was born April 13, 1967, to middle-class parents. Her singing career began in the ’80s with Las Nenas de Ringo y Jossie, before she joined the merengue group Chantelle, with whom she scored a big hit, “Aunque Tu No Quieras,” in 1989. Chantelle were a rarity among merengue acts of the time, which were generally male, and the three women enjoyed a lot of success during their run, which came to an end with ¡Qué Bien! in 1993, a year after Tañón made her solo debut, Sola. Released by WEA Latina, the same label that was home to Chantelle, Sola wasn’t a major success, yet it did well enough for Tañón to break away from Chantelle and continue her solo career. Her follow-up album, Mujer de Fuego (1993), proved markedly more successful, breaking into the Top Latin Albums chart and spawning a number of hits: “Contigo o sin Ti,” “Muchacho Malo,” “No Me Puedes Pedir,” “Vendras Llorando,” and “Presencie Tu Amor,” the latter of which was a Top Ten hit on the Top Latin Tracks chart.
