I think I’m gonna go with a C+. In a lot of ways, I like her solo stuff more than her Miami Sound Machine stuff. In most ways, really. Instrumentation is usually better, higher highs, more interesting songwriting. What MSM does better is stay simple. They’ve got their albums at the quality they’ve got them and I can just say I like them ok, B-. Estefan has a couple pop albums I actually like a good bit (Cuts Both Ways, Unwrapped), a few Latin Jazz albums that I got better at listening to with every one and am now invested in learning to appreciate more fully (Mi Tierra, Alma Caribeña, 90 Millas), and the rest of her 15 albums I just don’t much care for. They’re either (at best) pretty mid feeling pop albums, or cover albums/Christmas albums that I have next to no interest in. That puts her at a 33% hit rate by album, which is just way too low. I think it’s possible that in the future my appreciation for the stuff I like will have grown enough to outweigh the rest, to bump her up, but that won’t be for a while yet.
Because I admit, the stuff that I don’t like as much is genuinely kinda frustrating to me. The stuff that’s just pop that I happen to not care for, whatever. That’s a shame, it bums me out that not all her pop albums were more like Cuts Both Ways and Unwrapped, but it is what it is. The thing that frustrates me is the Christmas albums and the cover albums. With Christmas stuff, I just, why the same two dozen Boomer Christmas songs over and over and over again? Who cares, man? What did you do different? Why is your version worth broadcasting to the world? The one that’s matters the least but bothers me the most is BRAZIL305. BRAZIL305 gets special negative points because it’s mostly just a compilation of some of her own songs, her better songs, but where they added in whatever instrument/effect it is that sounds like you’re pulling a straw up and down through a lid. Wreek-a-wreeka-wreeka, wreek-a-wreeka. It’s obnoxious.
Moral of the story, her good stuff is pretty good but I’m feeling cantankerous and curmudgeonly about the stuff I didn’t like
Gloria Estefan complete, now listening to: Mark Ambor
tunafruitsandwitch 