The Standards by Gloria Estefan

The Standards is a studio album by Cuban-American recording artist Gloria Estefan. The singer's first English-language album since 2011's Miss Little Havana, and her twenty-seventh overall, it was released on September 10, 2013 on Sony Masterworks. The album features a selection of covers of traditional pop standards from the Great American Songbook. Releasing a covers album before where Estefan included her favorite tunes from all time, 1994 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me was a commercial success which gave Gloria two big hits around the world, "Turn The Beat Around" and "Everlasting Love". However, a project was in the making since Estefan recorded in 1993 a duet with Frank Sinatra at his smash album Duets where Gloria changed her traditional dance-pop song for a more mature and soft sound in the cover of the ballad, "Come Rain Or Come Shine". A total of 50 songs were chosen to be recorded for the album, recording only 16 songs that made it to the last cut, these songs were chosen by Estefan herself and Shelly Berg, the front leader and Dean of Music at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music, which worked with some greatest names in music such as Patti Austin, Elliot Smith and Arturo Sandoval, all before Estefan. These songs were recorded completely with talented musicians dedicated to music of this genre, most of it, a complete work of an orchestra was used for the recording process. Some of the collaborations included on the album will feature artists like: Laura Pausini, Joshua Bell and Dave Koz. Estefan tried to approach these standards with fresh ideas. First with "They Can't Take That Away From Me", they did an almost "Afro-Cuban feel meets the waltz," giving Estefan a sound known to her tunes. For Antonio Carlos Jobim's Brazilian classic "Eu Sei Que Vou Te Amar" Estefan composed English lyrics for the first-ever English version, "It's You I’ll Always Love" and composed Spanish lyrics as well as French-lyric. She also composed Spanish lyrics for Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" on which she sings with Laura Pausini in both the Spanish and Italian language. The recording of this song was principally inspired by the Michael Jackson and Natalie Cole version. With the pre-order services on some major music-order services, The Standards was able to be one of the most "preoderded" albums at Amazon.com, becoming only a week before being released the #1 most waited album on the Vocal and Broadway & Vocalists categories. When it was released, the album went onto the top the charts of the Amazon.com service at the overall albums, Pop and remained at the same positions on Vocal and Broadway & Vocalists. In July 8, 2013 it was announced via Amazon.com that the lead single for the album, would be "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and that will be released at the same site in July 9, 2013 as single download. That same date, the album pre-order was made available at the same store and ITunes Store. ℗ 2013 Crescent Moon Records, Inc.