Best Pepe Aguilar Songs: 15 Romantic Rancheras and Rocking Pop Tracks
Literally born into show business, the Mexican American star doesn’t believe in musical boundaries.
Pepe Aguilar was literally born into show business in 1968, while his parents, Mexican singing and movie superstars Antonio Aguilar and Flor Silvestre, were on tour in Texas. He began singing in the family rodeo spectacular at age three, debuting at Madison Square Garden. A 1978 recording of “El cantador,” a corrido popularized by Antonio Aguilar, captures young “Pepito” singing with his parents and his brother “Toñito” (Antonio Aguilar Jr.)
But the Texas-bred Aguilar’s teen spirit took the form of a rock band called Equs, and he’s maintained a lifetime love for groups like Pink Floyd and The Who. Those influences have contributed to his contemporary take on the romantic ranchera that landed his songs on both Latin pop and Regional Mexican charts, igniting the career of a Mexican American star who doesn’t believe in musical boundaries.
Listen to Pepe Aguilar’s Por Una Mujer Bonita now.
Aguilar would later make plain his love for rock with a live MTV Unplugged album, produced by Meme de Real, a member of supreme Mexican alternative band Café Tacvba. But early in his career, reportedly the result of his father’s opposition to his rock-and-roll dreams, he changed course to “follow my heart and my passion.” As he put it: “My heart tells me to respect my traditions, to move forward with Mexican music – which is mariachi, banda, norteña.”
He still looked the part of a young rebel in a black cowboy hat and jeans on the cover of Pepe Aguilar con tambora, his lauded solo debut as a keeper of that Regional Mexican flame, from 1991. It’s a feisty album that includes hangover-nursing songs like “Yo pago las otras”. But it was his smooth vocal delivery “Se me hace tarde” and other love serenades that attracted immediate attention. Later in the decade, the single “Por mujeres como tú” established Aguilar as a new kind of crossover star. The song, a romantic ballad on which he displayed the seductive phrasing of Latin leading men like Julio Iglesias or Luis Miguel, rose to number two on both Billboard’s Regional Mexican and Hot Latin Songs chart. Appearing on multiple Latin genre charts would become a hallmark of his entire career.
Aguilar, who on most of his album covers has worn the tight, colorful charro suits identified with Mexican horsemen and mariachis, quickly established himself as what one critic called a “traditional sound with modern appeal,” appearing on stage with a band that expanded a classic mariachi format with electric as well as acoustic guitar, drum kit and keyboards. “I developed my sound by incorporating structures and instruments that weren’t used in regional Mexican music (in the 1990s),” Aguilar recalled in a 2019 interview.
On songs like “Me estoy acostumbrando a ti,” from 1998’s Por el amor de siempre, he heightened his appeal as a universal entertainer, taking a mariachi band into the wee small hours of Sinatra territory with flourishing arrangements and female back-up singers.
The prolific recording artist cemented that sound and his image as a sensitive crooner on the 1999 album Por una mujer bonita, whose title track is a serenade propelled by acoustic guitar and violin. The confectionary love plea “Perdonóme,” (“Forgive Me”) hit with a wider audience that was embracing the Latin pop explosion that peaked with Ricky Martin’s appearance at the Grammy Awards; Aguilar would take home his own Grammy for Por una mujer bonita at the Grammys in 2000, winning for Best Mexican American Album. “Perdonóme” has become one of the most popular songs of his career and a Latin music classic.
Aguilar has aptly been described as “a cowboy in love.” In a genre often characterized as macho, in which revenge songs are a staple, he has no problem swallowing his pride. Apologies to women for his behavior are frequent in his songs, going as far as to title another track included on Por una mujer bonita: “Tenías razón” (“You Were Right.”)
Throughout his career, Aguilar has embodied the evolution of Mexican traditional music. In 2016, upon the release of his album “No lo había dicho,” perhaps his production with the clearest Latin rock sound, he told USA Today that “it is no longer necessary to do a mariachi-only album or a banda album. My audience understands that.”
Which doesn’t mean that Aguilar would ever put down the torch passed on to him by his father and other regional Mexican icons. He has frequently performed songs by Mexican greats, like Joan Sebastian’s “Enamorarse así.” In 2013, he recorded Lastima que sean ajenas, an album tribute to Vicente Fernandez that includes hits by the ranchera giant like “Por tu maldito amor.”
Of course Aguilar’s music has also paid homage to his father. On one of his best-known songs, “El Zacatecano,” featured on Por un mujer bonita, he nostalgically sings of the northern Mexican state where Antonio Aguilar was born (the elder Aguilar died in 2007). It opens with the lines:
Desde Zacatecas vengo
Para brindarles mi canto
Es la tierra de mi padre
Y la que yo quiero tanto
(I come from Zacatecas
To bring you my song
It is the land of my father
And the one that I so love)
“My father and I share respect for traditions, but not only musical ones,” Aguilar has said. “Also family traditions, history, and certain ways of being that for us are essential.”
Aguilar has kept that lifestyle current by reviving his family’s rodeo show. The touring event features a cast of rodeo riders, dancing horses, bulls, cows, singers, and musicians, starring Pepe Aguilar and his children Ángela and Leonardo, who have each established their own musical careers. In 2021, after the death of matriarch Flor Silvestre, the family recorded a television special and album for a multi-generational audience, titled México Hasta los Huesos.
The album features a tracklist of best-known Mexican songs including “La Llorona” and Antonio Aguilar’s classic “Que me entierran con la banda,” concluding with “Mexico lindo y querido.”
“That’s the legacy, more than a person,” Aguilar said upon receiving the Legacy honor at the Billboard Latin American Music Awards in 2023. “It’s the energy that represents regional Mexican music. Y viva México!”
