Ruth Lorenzo
Who is Ruth Lorenzo?
Ruth Lorenzo was born in Murcia on November 10, 1982, and from a very young age felt a special pull toward music: she recalls that on first hearing the musical “Annie” she wanted to sing those songs in English, and at six she discovered opera by listening to Montserrat Caballé.
At twelve she moved to the United States with her family, where she had her first contact with music at school and, encouraged by her teachers, began auditioning for musicals, taking part in productions of “The Phantom of the Opera” and “My Fair Lady.” At sixteen she returned to Spain and began taking singing lessons, though she had to stop due to her family’s financial difficulties.
Career
At nineteen she formed a rock band that toured Spain for three years before she launched a solo career. In 2002 she auditioned for the second edition of “Operación Triunfo” but was not selected; she then signed with Polaris World, performing over the summers while also doing public relations work.
Her big break came in 2008, when she auditioned for the fifth series of the British show “The X Factor.” She sang “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and earned a straight pass from the judges — Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole, Dannii Minogue and Louis Walsh. She got through bootcamp and reached the final judges’ houses round in Saint-Tropez, in the over-25s category mentored by Dannii Minogue, performing a Spanish-language version of “True Colors” that carried her into the show’s finalists. Throughout the competition she drew praise from figures such as Simon Cowell himself, actress Judi Dench, actor Johnny Depp, the band Take That, and then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and her rendition of “Purple Rain” became a viral phenomenon with millions of views. She reached the semi-finals, where she was eliminated even though the judges considered her final performance one of the best in the show’s history.
Legacy
Her run on “The X Factor” made her one of the best-known Spanish singers outside Spain at the time, opening the door to an international career of her own as a pop and rock performer.