Can’t Escape these vocals! Enrique Iglesias goes viral for awkward autotune fail as fans quip star sounds like ‘Kermit the Frog’ – after announcing retirement from album recording

Legendary singer Enrique Iglesias recently announced his retirement from recording albums after an extraordinary career in music – but lately he's been stunning fans for a very different reason.

Enrique, 48, was mercilessly mocked after a video of his clumsy, auto-tuned performance surfaced online last month, with fans comparing the iconic musician to Kermit the Frog and speculating that his voice technology had failed.

The artist has been touring the country with fellow music icons Ricky Martin and Pitbull as part of their Trilogy Tour, and the video featured him singing his hit love song Escape – but a version fans have never heard before.

“Someone said Enrique Iglesias sounds like Kermit the frog in this video and now I can't hear it anymore,” someone tweeted about a video of the artist singing Hero.

Another joked that the performance “cured” her of her decades-long crush on the star: “I am officially cured of my 20-plus year crush on Enrique Iglesias.”

'Is this an impersonator? What happened to Enrique Iglesias?' someone asked.

To one fan, the performance sounded more like amateur hour: “There's a karaoke night.”

“He belongs at an entertainment show on a cruise ship… on the last day of the voyage… as passengers leave the boat,” she wrote.

“omg i thought you made a joke on the video,” one TikTok user wrote.

“I'm just going to pretend this is Enrique's twin,” another posted.

Enrique's latest tour comes after he claimed he would keep his promise to stop recording new music following the release of his upcoming eleventh studio album.

With the focus now on Final (Vol 2) in recent months, the second Final installment will finally be released this February, more than two years after its predecessor.

The final installments are reportedly the last the Hero star will release in traditional album form.

Leading up to the promotion, the pop superstar gave a timeline for the album's release and then talked about what it meant for his career.

'It's finished. It's actually coming out in February,” Enrique shared Today. 'It's all done. What I want to do is make one or two videos right before the second leg of the tour and launch them.”

Enrique would further reiterate that his upcoming studio album, Final (Vol 2), will in fact be his last.

'I've been working on this album for a number of years. And for me it was always like I said: my last album… this is it. I don't think – no, I know, I'm not going to make any more albums.

Fans of the Bailando crooner will get a chance to see the singer in action on his current tour.

Since mid-October, Iglesias has been on the road with Ricky Martin and Pitbull for The Trilogy Tour.

A month after the three-piece concerts, it was announced that the tour was being extended with 18 new shows in 2024.

The trio of stars, who have all reaped the rewards of being a major pop star, all know each other well after sharing the stage while on tour together.

Iglesias and Pitbull previously went on tour in 2017, while Iglesias and Martin also joined forces for their own series of performances in 2021.

The native of Madrid, Spain, has been open and honest lately about the fact that the final installments were his final release in traditional album form.

'It could well be my last album. It's not something I've thought about in recent months. It's something I've been thinking about for the past few years,” Iglesias shared during an Instagram chat with Ricky Martin and Sebastian Yatra, as reported by The Reporter in September 2021.

'There will be Vol. 1 and vol. 2, but they are final. I'm at that point in my life, that chapter in my life, where I think it's the right time to put it out there and I've been thinking about this since 2015.”

Despite the news, fans can rest assured that Iglesias has insisted he won't stop making music completely. He promised that this was not the case, and that he would be dropping singles, and that other projects will continue to come.

“For me, in my life, I think this is the last one,” he confirmed his decision.

'I'm never going to stop writing songs because I enjoy writing songs, but I'm going to do it in a different way – which means they don't necessarily have to be packaged as an album – so this project is for me important,” he explained at the time.

As a sign that he will still be somewhat active, Iglesias released the first Vol. 2 single, Así Es La Vida, with Argentinian singer Maria Beccera, in October.