Aries

Aries

When Luis Miguel entered the studios of WEA Latina to record his ninth album in 1992, he did it with only one thing in mind: to make a different album, with songs that could move the masses. The year before, he had opened one of his most celebrated chapters, the first album of his successful bolero saga, 1991’s Romance, which could’ve become his comfort zone. However, his ambition led him to a project that could go further and, for the first time, explored his true tastes without any kind of limitation. Or, in other words, a project that was finally fun for him. Born in April 1970, Luis Miguel is, under the Western zodiac, an Aries. Looking among the songs that could title his new album, he considered that this self-produced record was made entirely on his own terms. Thus, Aries became his most ambitious project, taking almost a year to complete at the cost of more than $1.5 million. The mastermind in charge of materializing the ideas of El Sol was Kiko Cibrian, hired after a failed attempt to coincide with the vision that Bruce Swedien—known for his work with Quincy Jones, especially on Michael Jackson’s Thriller—had for the LP. That's how demanding the assignment was. Francisco Céspedes and Juan Luis Guerra wrote the ballads “Pensar en Ti” and “Hasta Que Me Olvides,” respectively, at LuisMi’s specific request. For “Qué Nivel de Mujer,” a reinterpretation in Spanish of “Attitude Dance” by Tower of Power, he personally sought out the Californian group to record the horn section in his version. Citing R&B, soul, and funk as influences, Luis Miguel featured songs such as “Suave” to generate a more ad hoc dance atmosphere for the decade. However, his escape was not complete, and he decided to include more confident ballads, which appear mixed in the tracklist along with Aries' more risky melodies. In that respect, it's an album that took him to the top and emancipated him but kept him in a constant limbo: venturing out and taking the reins of his own destiny, and at the same time being fearful of exposing his vulnerability. In the end, that's the complexity of an Aries: one who rides a convertible through Acapulco only to become a solitary hermit once he arrives at his mansion.

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