Romeo Santos is the stage name of Anthony Santos, a popular American singer, actor and an artist. He is very popular not only in the Latin countries but all over the world. He has a very huge fan base in Europe.
He was the lead vocal of a band “Aventura”, before he started his solo career which turned out to be the best business move for him.
He is often called “The King of Bachata Music” which he made more popular than ever.
Early years
He was born as July 21, 1981 in New York City in New York, United States of America.
He comes of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent and is very proud of it.
Anthony was raised in a decent, hardworking family whose members had difficult manual jobs: his father was a construction worker and his mother was a housewife.
His parents were always great support for him and always helped him in building his career.
He has only one sibling, a sister named Laura Santos. They are very close and both often ask each other for advices.
Romeo is also very generous to his family in financial matters and makes sure they live a cozy life.
He was 12 years old when he joined the choir in the church where he discovered his love for music.
The choir leader also noticed the punktuality and the voice of Romeo and encouraged him to start taking music more seriously.
Three years later, he fell in love with bachata music but it wasn’t popular at that time. He decided that it was time for him to show the world how great is bachata music.
It was in the 90’s that Anthony started his own music group called “Los Tinellers” alongside his family members, his cousins Henry, Max, and Lenny.
Career development
“Los Tinellers” means “The Teenagers” in Dominican. They started to be popular, first in their hometown and afterwards even wider.
They have released their album called “Trampa de Amor” and after a few years they have changed their name into “Aventura”.
During this period they had many stage performances and were often invited to play at special events.
Romeo was the most creative member of their bachata band which started out from Bronx in New York.
He wrote most of their songs and was the leading vocalist of the group. He had a vision of how he could fuse bachata music with more popular pop music and this turned out to be a great way to introduce bachata to people.
“Aventura” was born in 1997 by all Santos members (meaning they were all relatives and members of family Santos) : Anthony “Romeo”, Henry, Lenny and Max- all surnamed Santos.
Their big success came in 1999 when they were recognized as great artists who manage to fuse traditional bachata music with Pop, R&B and Hip Hop.
Their song named “Obsesión” was released in 2004 and became a huge hit, especially in Europe. This was the song that opened the gates to a wider audience and fame.
This song was situated at No.1 on the “Eurochart Hot 100” for a period of 110 days in a row.
The band was very surprised by their European success. They never thought that they would become popular in Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and other European countries but in some of these countries they gained Platinum sales.
Aventura has released a lot of albums with big hits such as “Obsesión”, “Un Beso”, “El Perdedor” and more.
In 2011 the group decided to take a break and turn to some individual projects.
In 2014, they had a concert at Yankee Stadium which was sold out. It was originally Romeo’s concert but he wanted to tribute the second night to his former band.
At the beginning of 2016 he had concerts throughout the whole month of February and every single concert was sold out.
In 2009, his band was given a great honor to sing in White House. They were invited to perform in front of Barack Obama, American President.
Five years later, in 2014, he returned to perform solo at White House at an event named “Salute to the Troops”.
This was a lifetime exprrience for him and he stated that it was a great honor for him.
One year later, he was one of the few artists to give prizes to other music artists at the MTV Video Music Awards. This event confirmed that he was a recognized artist now.
His first solo single was named “You” and it became the leading single for his first music album “Formula”. His album was made and released by Sony Latin Music.
The single No.2 was a song named “Promise”, which was made in collaboration with Usher. It was a great satisfaction for him to work with such a fabulous composer.
Both of this songs came very high on the Latin charts and were all over radio stations.
In 2012, he successfully sold out one of the most popular places for performers: Madison Square Garden.
This three night long performance was eventually turned to CD and DVD.
Two years later, he did what a lot of people couldn’t believe. He has sold out Yankees stadium. This was something he was very proud of because he was the first Latin musician to do it.
In 2014, he has released his second work of art, an album called “Formula Vol.2”. This album had some very famous artist as guest stars. He collaborated with Drake, Nicki Minaj and his favorite Carlos Santana.
It was his dream come true and proving to everyone that didn’t believe it that there is a way to succeed if you only want to hard enough.
Soon his second album became the fastest sellung album of Latin music in the whole year.
After this album he has released a new music single titled “Héroe Favorito” three years later. The same year, in 2017, he has released his new album named “Golden”.
There were a lot of collabs on this album too but this time mostly from Latin artists: Juan Luis Guerra, Julio Iglesias and Jessie Reyez were his favorites.
In 2018 he was proclaimed as the Winner of Best Bachata Video for the video made for his single “Imitadora”. He was also nominated in the category for the Best Latin Album at the Billboard Music Awards same year.
As for a lot of awards he received, other than Billboard Music Awards, he managed to collect two “Premios Juventud” awards and a high number of twenty two “ASCAP Awards”. He is also very interested in the movie industry and in acting.
His first role was in 2007 when he and his band Aventura had live music performance in the Dominican film titled “Sanky Panky”.
His first solo act was in 2015, when he was given a role in the action movie “Furious 7” with stars such as Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. He played a role of Mando which is shorten for Armando.
In 2013, he guest appeared at “Sesame Street” where he performed one of his songs.
In 2016, Romeo was hired to give the voice to a cartoon character in “The Angry Birds Movie”.
He is successfully represented by Johnny Marines Enterprise, Inc.
In 2016, he became the CEO of “Roc Nation Latin “, as a part of the record company “Roc Nation”, founded and owned by Jay-Z.
He signed a lot of Latin artists to this company in this period, such as Mozart la Para and Karen Rodriguez.
Due to his popularity, he made appearances in a lot of TV commercial and Dr Pepper advert is the most popular one.
His first TV show appearance was in 2012, when he was a guest in “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”.
He has 13 million followers on his Instagram account which is quite an impressive number.
Personal life
He is religious and as most of the Latin people he is also a Christian.
Although there are no records about his girlfriends it is common knowledge that he has one son, Alex Damian Santos.
A lot of yellow press mention his alleged girlfriend Francelys because he was seen with her on the beaches of Los Cabos in Mexico.
He is a very big admirer of Freddie Mercury and “Queen” and often plays their music at home.
Quick summary
Full name: Romeo Santos
Date of birth: July 21, 1981
Birthplace: New York, United States
Age: 37
Profession: musician, pianist, guitarist, vocalist, songwriter
Height: 185 cm
Weight: 91 kgs
Net Worth: $30 million
