Te Acordaras De Mi

Album review

Te Acordarás de Mí, released in 1998, is where Olga Tañón's discography begins to go astray. Here she leaves behind the consistently thrilling (and chart-topping) tropical music she'd enjoyed for several albums, namely Mujer de Fuego, Siente el Amor..., and Llévame Contigo. She'd done this once before, releasing an album of Marco Antonio Solís songs, Nuevos Senderos, in 1996. Instead of releasing another album of regional Mexican-styled music, however -- and a modest, enjoyable one at that, as Nuevos Senderos had been -- she courts much broader appeal, fashioning herself as a Latin pop diva à la Thalía. The photogenic telenovela star is the logical point of connection, because Te Acordarás de Mí features key contributions from hitmaker Kike Santander, who had almost single-handedly made Thalía's Amor a la Mexicana the amazement that it was a year prior, in 1997. And, too, Santander had worked with Gloria Estefan before that, on Abriendo Puertas in 1995. So Tañón was clearly aiming far beyond her tropical fan base with Te Acordarás de Mí, aligning herself with a proven popsmith like Santander, and the other telling sign is the absence of her former stable of songwriters: Yaidelice Monrrozeau, Rodolfo Barreras, Raldy Vázquez, and Gustavo Márquez, all of whom are sadly MIA. This was a bold move, for sure, and the result is scattershot. The three Santander songs are fantastic, as expected: the album-opening "Tu Amor" is a barnburner, one of Tañón's all-time best dance songs, while "Hielo y Fuego" and "Un Hombre y una Mujer" are also excellent. Beyond the Santander songs, Te Acordarás de Mí veers all over, generally interspersing uptempo dance-pop with romantic ballads. The uptempo songs tend to be the highlights, most notably the fierce "El Niño." The ballads tend to be generic, on the other hand; the best is "Escondidos," a Cristian Castro duet. So consider this initial crossover venture a measured success: Te Acordarás de Mí boasts a few really great hits, certainly, along with some good album tracks, yet it also includes a surprising number of misses -- not a particularly good omen, given how superlative and rock-solid Tañón's last few albums had been.

© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo