Legend has it that one night in the late ’90s in Punta del Este, Uruguay, María Martha Serra Lima and other bolero singers met Luis Miguel and thanked him for giving boleros a breath of fresh air and, incidentally, giving those singers more work. In 1991, LuisMi presented Romance, in which he reinterpreted classic ballads with a contemporary touch, to great critical and commercial success. 1994’s Segundo Romance carried on this exploration of the Latin American tradition. The series continued with 1997’s Romances, his 12th studio album. As in previous installments, Armando Manzanero led the production of Romances, recorded in Los Angeles. These 14 cuts included bolero standards, such as Álvaro Carrillo’s “Sabor a Mí” and Consuelo Velázquez’s “Bésame Mucho,” along with Enrique Santos Discépolo’s tango “Uno.” However, this third volume brought new ingredients: new compositions by Manzanero (“Por Debajo de la Mesa”) and co-producer Bebu Silvetti (“Contigo [Estar Contigo]”), and a bossa nova that refreshed the album’s rhythm, “Mañana de Carnaval,” an interpretation of the original by Brazil’s Luiz Bonfá. This, along with a translation of a song by Charles Aznavour, which became “De Quererte Así,” showed the breadth of Luis Miguel's varied musical interests. Throughout Romances, Luis Miguel's voice illuminates Silvetti's sumptuous arrangements—61 musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic participated in the recording—to rethink these timeless classics. On “Bésame Mucho,” Luis Miguel quickens the pace of the original, intensifies its percussion, and adds female choirs, taking it towards rock and confirming it as resistant to the test of time. Each song is a platform from which Luis Miguel and his team jump and invent, allowing us to return to familiar sounds as if we were entering them for the first time.