Canter Bridge

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Those of us who came of musical age with Gloria have always known she can sing to shape our souls, even without the full-throated power of other pop divas. Only recently have we become aware how well she can write.

Unwrapped is her best effort yet at song-writing, an album full of wistful, middle-aged, loverly and motherly reflections about the life that has brought her from unknown Gloria Milagrosa Fajardo to the status that the album’s final song and final word tell us she never set out to be: ‘famous’.

This is Gloria writ pensive. Not all of the lyrics flow, indeed some are heavy and even awkward, rescued mostly by well-strung music, Gloria’s understated interpretive touch, and a very good band.

Yet Ms. Estefan blooms lyrically in moments, nowhere more eloquently than in the song that reverses the album’s title. The upbeat ‘Wrapped’ begins with voices and strings alone except for the lightest touch from the bang-boys:

I keep every tear like an ocean
For every day that my fortune
Kept me from being with you
I cradle your faith that reveals me
Fills me with promise anew

Conceptually, Gloria has always sung of that conjunction of choice, faithfulness, and destiny that makes lives and, sometimes, unmakes them. It would be too much too demand a coherent weaving of passion’s leaps and destiny’s unbending path, for who of us experiences life coherently with two such forces in play?

Still, she has counsel for those immobilized by the dilemma. Hear the opening track:

You fear love that’s real love
Expecting ideal love
It’s hard to conceal love
Deny what you feel, love, you feel love

This, in song touched with an almost gnostic insight into the about-to-collapse surety of an intended lover:

I think it’s only fair to bring to your attention
You’re about to fall in love
Yes, you’re gonna fall in love

The music throughout is principallly acoustic with nimble percussion, the ornamentation of an intruding violin. This is almost Gloria cum sonata rather than Gloria the stage spectacle.

Gloria sings to people whom she loves in album.

To her love:
A Little Push
Te Amaré
Your Picture
Dangerous Game
Into You
I will Always Need Your Love
Say Goodbye

To a confused partner:
In the Meantime

To people tempted (like her?) to place career and frenzy ahead of love:
One Name

To someone who’s hurt her deeply:
I Wish You

To her daughter:
You

To herself:
Famous

Unwrapped is Gloria announcing a pause to reflect in a dizzying and meteoric life and career. Vulnerabilities insinuate themselves from behind the ‘pitiless light of the glare’ (Famous).

There is pain here, at numerous points, but almost granite resolve to survive it and thrive beyond it. The singer’s voice is almost preternatually firm—not an adjective often associated with the female voice or any voice—in the opening lines of ‘In the Meantime’:

Take a little breather
Figure out the reasons that you stopped believing
Save me your caresses
Go clear up the confusion that our face confesses
Travel around the sun

Yet, in spite of language that brushes up against ultimatum, there is hope and the promise to be there for her confused lover if destiny—there we go again—makes ‘our paths cross down the line’.

If Gloria continues to mellow and settle in this way, her listeners can look forward to continued accompaniment as they walk their not unrelated paths.