Mexican ballad singer and composer Armando Manzanero has died at the age of 85.
Manzanero was admitted to hospital in recent weeks with Covid-19 and at one point was on a ventilator.
But his manager, Laura Blum, said he died at a Mexico City hospital of complications from a kidney problem.
Manzanero was a crooner best known for songs like Somos Novios which, with translated English lyrics, became the 1970s hit It’s Impossible for Perry Como.
Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador praised the Yucatan native as “a great composer, and the country’s best”.
“Besides that, he was a man with sensitivity, on social questions as well,” the president noted.
Lopez Obrador played a video clip of Manzanero singing the song Adoro and appeared so overcome by emotion at the news of his death that he cut short his daily news conference.
“I do not want to continue with this press conference. It ends here,” Lopez Obrador said before playing the clip.
Armando Manzanero, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Latin GRAMMY, as well as a great friend of the Academy, has left us. We celebrate his life and work. An irreparable loss for the world of Latin music. Our hearts go out to the Manzanero family.
— The Latin Recording Academy / Latin GRAMMYs (@LatinGRAMMYs) December 28, 2020
Manzanero was born in Merida, the capital of Yucatan state, and his ashes will be returned there, Blum said.
He was proud of his roots in the largely Maya indigenous state, noting: “I am a Mexican of Mayan ancestry, I am a Mayan Indian.”
In a 2020 interview with The Associated Press, Manzanero expressed pride at how other artists continued to sing songs he wrote decades ago.
“The song I wrote 50 or 60 years ago is still alive,” Manzanero said. “Even flowers don’t live that long.”
He had several ex-wives, seven children and 16 grandchildren, all of whom survived him.
