"Begin the Beguine" is a song written by Cole Porter (1891–1964). Porter composed the song at the piano in the bar of the Ritz Hotel in Paris^{[citation needed]}. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.

The beguine music and dance form, a slow, close couples' dance, comes from the Caribbean, especially Martinique and Guadeloupe, where in the local Creole language the name means "White lady". It is a combination of French ballroom dance and Latin folk dance, which became popular in Paris and spread further abroad in the 1940s, largely due to the influence of the Porter song.

Based on the title dance, the song is notable for its 108-measure length, departing drastically from the conventional thirty-two-bar form. Where a typical "standard" popular song of its time was written in a fairly strict 32-measure form consisting of two or three eight-measure subjects generally arranged in the form A-A-B-A or A-B-A-C, "Begin the Beguine" employs the form A-A-B-A-C1-C2 with each phrase being sixteen measures in length rather than the usual eight. The final "C2" section is stretched beyond its 16 measures an additional twelve bars for a total of 28 measures, with the twelve additional measures providing a sense of finality to the long form.

Michael Steven Bublé ( /ˈbuːbleɪ/; born 9 September 1975) is an Italian Canadian singer and actor. He has won several awards, including three Grammy Awards and multiple Juno Awards. His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the UK. He found a worldwide audience with his 2005 album It's Time, and his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible which reached number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, the U.K. Albums Chart, the U.S. Billboard 200 albums chart, the Australian ARIA Albums Chart and several European charts. Bublé has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

Michael Bublé was born in the City of Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada to Lewis Bublé, a salmon fisherman, and Amber (née Santagà). He has two younger sisters, Crystal (an actress) and Brandee. He attended Seaforth Elementary School and Cariboo Hill Secondary School. According to an Oprah interview on 9 October 2009, Bublé dreamed of becoming a famous singer since age two. When he was a teenager, he slept with his Bible and prayed to become a singer. Bublé's interest in jazz music began around age five when his family played Bing Crosby's White Christmas album at Christmas time. The first time that his family noticed his singing talent was at Christmas time when Bublé was 13 years old, and they heard him powerfully sing the phrase "May your days be merry and bright" when the family was singing to the song "White Christmas" in a car ride.

Julio Iglesias (born Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva; September 23, 1943) is a Spanish singer and songwriter whose romantic image, magnetic stage presence, and expressive music made him one of the best-selling artists of all time. By the early 21st century he had sold hundreds of millions of albums in more than a dozen languages. He has sold over 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages and released 77 albums. According to Sony Music Entertainment, he is one of the top 15 best-selling music artists in history. While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads, his success has continued on as he entered new musical endeavors. He is the father of singer Enrique Iglesias.

Iglesias was born in Madrid, the eldest son of Dr. Julio Iglesias Puga and María del Rosario de la Cueva y Perignat. Iglesias' father's family was from Galicia, and Iglesias' mother an Andalusian.

In the 1960s, he studied law in Madrid and was a goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's football teams. On September 22, 1963, he was involved in a car crash, resulting in an injury to his spinal cord. He said, "I had a car accident; [a] very, very strange car accident...I lost control of the car and rolled it, resulting in what they call 'paraparexia,' which is not paraplegia. It's a compression in the [spinal] cord, in the sense of the neck...my spinal cord; and I was very, very ill for three years."  His doctors thought he would never walk again; indeed, his legs were left permanently weakened, and they continued to require therapy as of late October 2010. However, slowly, he began recovering his health. To develop and increase the dexterity of his hands, he began playing guitar. When he recovered from his accident, he resumed academic studies and traveled to the United Kingdom to study the English language, first in Ramsgate, then at Bell Educational Trust's Language School in Cambridge.