Melendi - Quítate las Gafas (2016)

Singer/songwriter Ramón Melendi Espina was born in 1979 in Oviedo, Spain. When their son was still quite young, Melendi's parents decided that he was not a born student, and so allowed him to turn his focus to other things such as soccer and music. He spent much of his youth hanging out in the streets of Oviedo, learning "lessons that they don't teach in school." In 2001, Melendi joined the band El Bosque de Sherwood (Sherwood Forest), which inspired him to record a few of his own songs solo. He went into the studio with three songs, "Sin Noticias de Holanda," "Vuelvo a Traficar," and "El Informe Forense." In 2002, through a good friend, Melendi's three-song demo ended up in the hands of Carlito Records' Javier Valiño, who enthusiastically signed him shortly thereafter. In February of 2003, Sin Noticias de Holanda was released, featuring 12 songs, all of them Melendi's compositions. The disc's release was followed by a short national tour, and by 2004 Melendi was appearing in the Top 100 on the national charts. The record went gold a short time later.

Melendi's second disc, Que el Cielo Espere Sentao, was released in 2005, the same year that he celebrated the birth of his first daughter, Carlota. Melendi continued to tour, and his third album, entitled Mientras No Cueste Trabajo, was released in 2006. Two years later the Spanish pop crooner released his fourth record, Curiosa la Cara de Tu Padre (produced by fellow countryman José de Castro), which included the hit single "Un Violinista en Tu Tejado" Melendi returned in 2010 with his rock-oriented album Volvamos a Empezar and stepped away from his popular rhumba-inspired pop. This new approach continued with 2012's Lágrimas Desordenadas and 2014's critically acclaimed Un Alumno Más, the latter highly regarded as one of Melendi's most honest, mature, and forthright pieces of work. In 2015, he released the live Directo a Septiembre and was awarded the Premio de la Música as well as several other awards from musical media stations Cadena Cien and 40 Principales. Melendi's eighth studio album, Quitate las Gafas, was a personal effort that found the artist looking inside himself in his lyrics. Despite its introspective nature, the album became a popular success, rising to the top of the Spanish album charts. Yo Me Veo Contigo, Melendi's ninth full-length effort, followed in 2017.