Canter Bridge

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Like a mountain range that spreads peaks out as far as the eye can see, Gloria peaked early, then went on to add album after album to the view. Cuts Both Ways is definitely her early peak, a CD that showed her at the top of her game as a singer in both Spanish and English.

‘Ay, Ay, I’ is vintage Cubanesque dance music and Gloria pulls it off with savoir-faire, only to change tactics entirely by going balladesque on track two with ‘Here We are’.

This was 1989 and Gloria was only becoming the pop star we eventually took for granted. This was her main move on to center stage as a singer with a larger-than-clubs repertoire of truly moving music.

‘Oye mi canto’ was the album’s biggest hit. I first knew it in Spanish, since I was living in Latin America at the time. It still strikes me as the better of the two versions.

But if ‘Oye’ won the day for popularity, ‘Get On Your Feet’ was a kind of Gloria-esque anthem that has survived by sheer spunk and rhythm. The amazing thing is that she could transition from that tune to the longing tones of ‘Your Love is Bad for Me’ without suffering whiplash.

But she could. And she did.

In Cuts Both Ways, Gloria—not for the last time—was magnificent.