After years of under-the-radar album releases and a regional following at best,
Miami Sound Machine
rocketed to mainstream recognition with one song,
"Conga."
That one song changed everything for the group, especially lead singer
Gloria Estefan
, who suddenly became a
pop
star by default. So when it came time to release the follow-up to
Primitive Love
, the album that had spun off
"Conga,"
the
billing was changed to the more marketable "
and
" (and an album later, just
). Thankfully, the change of billing is the biggest change from
to
Let It Loose
. The unabashed
dance-pop
remains, most importantly the token romantic
ballads
dance
songs (the often goofy album filler remains too, of course). If you really want to analyze the albums relative to one another, you'll find that
essentially is a rewrite of
-- almost song for song, in fact, with a very catchy
song opening the album, followed by the title track, a romantic
ballad
, some side-closing filler, a second-side-opening
song, some filler, another token
, and then some more filler to close out the album. But this is precisely why
is such a great little album. You see,
had been a mid-'80s
gem as far as mid-'80s
goes, and
is a marked improvement. For instance, the slight misfire of
"Body to Body"
is now the bull's-eye
of
"Betcha Say That,"
the pretty-good
"Words Get in the Way"
is now the really good
"Can't Stay Away from You,"
and so on. The one exception is
"Rhythm Is Gonna Get You,"
which isn't quite on a par with
but then again, that's raising the bar awfully high. In any event, listeners ate up every spun-off single, all five of them, which was more than enough to drive the album well into the
Billboard
200 Top Ten. Its appeal and popularity aside,
is all the more special because it marks the end of
in name as well as sound. When
Estefan
would return with
Cuts Both Ways
in 1989, she'd drastically shift her sound toward
adult contemporary
, and while that opened up a new and lucrative market for her to tap with much success, it meant the end of goofball filler like
"Love Toy"
bubblegum
delights like
"1-2-3."
~ Jason Birchmeier