Soraya - Gold (2006)

Most of the artists featured in Universal Music's Gold reissue series of double-CD career retrospectives are older ones with long discographies from which the compilers have chosen hits and key album tracks. That is not the case with the Soraya entry. Soraya made three albums for Universal Music Latino -- 1996's En Esta Noche, 1997's Torre de Marfil, and 2000's Cuerpo y Alma -- before leaving for EMI, and her Gold collection is drawn exclusively from those three discs. Nine selections each come from the ten-track En Esta Noche and the 12-track Cuerpo y Alma, with another six taken from the 11-track Torre de Marfil. Thus, the album isn't so much a best-of retrospective as a slightly condensed version of the early period of the artist's career, containing 24 of the 33 available songs. The compilers have mixed the tracks up in the sequencing, which turns out not to have been a good idea. En Esta Noche is really the work of a singer/songwriter with an individual style, while Cuerpo y Alma is a much more produced pop/rock effort, and Torre de Marfil is somewhere in between. Switching back and forth between the albums reveals jarring differences in production values and musical approaches. By the time of Cuerpo y Alma, Soraya is taking on seductive dance tracks like the title song and "Algo Tan Mio," and she is frequently singing in English. (A New Jersey native, she holds dual citizenship with Colombia, her parents' country, and also did an English-language version of En Esta Noche.) The sassy "When Did I Say That?," co-written with pop/country songwriter Gary Burr and R&B songwriter Edwin Nicholas, for example, could be an adult contemporary hit for Sheryl Crow or a country hit for Shelby Lynne, depending on the treatment, though Soraya handles it just fine herself. In contrast, "Pueblito Viejo," which precedes it, is a lush, string-filled ballad from En Esta Noche. Soraya's versatility is demonstrated on this collection, even if it could have been programmed more coherently.