El Rey

José Alfredo Jiménez never saw El Rey reach the top. He wrote and recorded the song in 1971, a portrait of a rough, hard-living man who insists that whatever his circumstances, he is still the king among his peers. A chart published by Record World credited it as reaching number one in Mexico in 1974, a year after Jiménez died. By then the ranchera singer named Vicente Fernández had cut his own version in 1973. Other singers had recorded it before him, Pedro Vargas among them, but Fernández's is often considered the best-known version of all. The song also seeped into everyday Mexican culture: in a 1975 episode of El Chavo del 8 it plays every time Quico opens his mouth after swallowing a radio, and Cantinflas sang it in his last film, El barrendero. It has since travelled far from the cantina. Luis Miguel, Maná, Andrés Calamaro and Plácido Domingo have all taken it on, and there is even a flamenco version by bulerías. In 2022 Christina Aguilera answered it with La Reina, a respectful reply to Fernández's version arguing that a king is nothing without his queen. In 2025 the Library of Congress added his 1973 recording to the US National Recording Registry, half a century after a dead songwriter's crown passed to a living singer.