It was rock 'n' roll--big and intense. From "Don't Turn Off The Lights" (and its Spanish version, "No Apagues La Luz") to "Making Love For Fun," "I Will Survive" and "World Crashes Down," Iglesias challenges expectations, while displaying his prowess as a songwriter.

For Iglesias to take a big, new step forward would not astonish anyone who has studied his career. His fiercely independent streak and fearless nature stretches from shopping his first demos under a pseudonym to his Spanish-language triumphs which blazed the trail for others to follow to being one of the few pop artists in any language who writes most of his songs to a notorious radio and television appearance with shock jock Howard Stern.

While "Hero" satisfies the romantic balladeer side of Iglesias, the rest of the album fuels his rock 'n' roll heart. "This was the most fun I've had doing an album. I felt something in the studio I'd never felt before--magic. It all clicked. I was so into it I practically lived in the studio. At one point I didn't leave for three days straight and I just slept on the sofa," he says, adding with a laugh, "I didn't even take a bath."

Iglesias, who co-wrote and co-produced nearly every song on Escape, applied a unique litmus test to judge whether a song would make the album: "If you can play it in any style and it still sounds good. The test on 'Don't Turn Off The Lights' was doing it acoustic. We made 'I Will Survive' sound like anything from Run-DMC to disco. We took a lot of time mixing each song. Without a doubt, this is the most detailed album I've ever done."