Leveraging the runaway success of her previous album,
Let It Loose
,
Gloria Estefan
furthered her indulgence in spare, moody love
ballads
and club-ready
dance-pop
jams for
Cuts Both Ways
and scored herself another Top Ten album. The transformation of
the lead singer of
Miami Sound Machine
to
the
pop
star is complete here. While
had been the first
album to co-bill
Estefan
(that is, "
and
"),
is billed simply to the star herself. And it plays that way, too, with a heavy reliance on
Gloria
-spotlighting
-- roughly half the album, discounting the album-ending Spanish-language versions.
's patented
Latin dance
-lite style is sidelined a bit, for better and for worse. Sure,
"Ay, Ay, I,"
"Say,"
"Oy Mi Canto,"
"Get on Your Feet"
are all club-ready with their big late-'80s synth-drum patterns, but only
comes close to matching the majesty of past club hits like
"Conga,"
"Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,"
"1-2-3."
And more tellingly, there aren't any straight
songs here like
"Bad Boy"
or
"Betcha Say That."
goes only both ways -- either
ballad
jam
-- which makes for a very up-and-down listening experience as the tempos alternate drastically from one song to the next. All this over-analysis aside, there are some super songs here, namely
"Here We Are,"
"Don't Wanna Lose You,"
"Get on Your Feet."
That's a lot of super-ness for one album, even if on the whole
seems overly calculated and sadly foreshadows the audience displacement that
would experience in subsequent years as she drifted even further away from the unabashed
-style
of yesteryear. Even so,
is one of her best and, without question, was one of her most successful, clear affirmation that
had indeed become one of the biggest
stars in the whole wide world as the '80s came to a close. ~ Jason Birchmeier