Antony felt equally at house within the syrupy romántica type — he croons like a drama prince on “Hasta Ayer” — and sharing the stage with Celia Cruz. He crossed over to the pop mainstream in 1999, but remained stubbornly faithful to his salsa roots. 2013’s “Vivir Mi Vida” — a tropical reinvention of a hit by Algerian star Khaled — found him on the high of his recreation, while the rugged title track of his 2022 album, Pa’llá Voy, confirms him as one of the distinctive and expressive vocalists within the Afro-Caribbean spectrum. Scored only a handful of Top 10 R&B hits in the look at here now Sixties however loved 21st-century acclaim as an Americana star, favored to perform what he called sermonettes — singing of heartache like he was in church, then speaking/preaching a gospel of the facility of love, then back to the music. Few soul singers have ever been so thrillingly melismatic while so exactly enunciating their message. On 1962’s “Just Out of Reach,” his voice glides gracefully from a burbling baritone to bracing gospel imprecations, then on up the scale to an inimitable country-soul croon.
