July 12, 2010

By By Ayala Ben-Yehuda

Siente Music, the joint venture label between Universal Music Latino and Cisneros Group?s Venevision International, has signed Mexican actress/singer Lucero.

Lucero, a child star and telenovela actress who recorded her first album in 1982 on Musart, released a live album on EMI in 2007 after a recording career that also included stints on Melody and Sony Music. She currently stars in hit Televisa soap opera ?Soy Tu Due?a,? which debuted in the U.S. on Univision June 1. Lucero?s theme song for the show, ?Due?a De Tu Amor,? will be the first single from Lucero?s forthcoming album, ?Indispensable,? due Sept. 21. The song will go up for digital sale August 8.

According to Siente Music, Lucero co-wrote some tracks (including the single, with Karla Aponte and Silvio Richetto) and co-produced the album with Ric Wake and Cesar Lemos.

Industry experts ranked a song's placement as a theme for a telenovela as the No. 1 platform for exposure of Latin music in the U.S., according to Billboard's 2009 "Maximum Exposure" survey. In a twist on that conventional wisdom, Pedro Fernandez' "Amarte a la Antigua" album benefited greatly from Fernandez' participation as star of the soap opera "Hasta Que el Dinero Nos Separe," for which he also sang the theme song. But his album didn't actually take off until Fernandez performed a
different song, "Amarte a la Antigua," on the show.

Subscribe to Billboard magazine today!