A Puro Fuego - Greatest Hits

Dethroned by dismayed merengue devotees who resented her obvious pop-crossover ambitions, onetime Queen Olga Tañón found herself in an uncomfortable position circa 2003, a half-decade after she began her rocky drift toward the middle of the road. Sure, she scored some big hits along the way ("Tu Amor," "Miénteme," "Asi Es la Vida") and certainly broadened her appeal internationally because of her poppier mannerisms. Yet this success didn't match the success she experienced during the mid-'90s when she was recording strictly tropical music. In fact, each of Tañón's pop-crossover albums fared less well than its predecessor, and her latest, Sobrevivir, didn't even break the Top Ten of the Top Latin Albums chart, the first time since 1994 she hadn't done so. Hence the impeachment of the Queen of Merengue. Then in 2003 came A Puro Fuego, which seemed like an act of appeasement. It was Tañón's first beginning-to-end merengue album since Llévame Contigo (1997), and it's probably the best beginning-to-end album in her entire discography — to date, and probably ever after, too. That's because it's a compilation of her greatest merengues ever, topped off by two versions of a fantastic new song, "Cuándo Tú No Estas." This new song, featured here in both tropical and reggaeton versions, is partly so fantastic because it teams Tañón with Sergio George, as sure-fire a hitmaker of this type as any. A Puro Fuego remarkably reaches all the way back to 1992 ("Me Cambio por Ella") in its quest to compile the ultimate merengue album by Tañón, and it does so perfectly, rounding up all the key songs, including such superlative barnburners as "Así Es la Vida [Versión Merengue]," "El Frío de Tú Adíos," "Como Olvidar [Versión Merengue]," and "Entre la Noche y el Día." If unassuming observers mistook it for a new album, that would be understandable — it had been a long time since Tañón had released an album like this — and if those dismayed merengue devotees suddenly began to reconsider their dethronement of the Queen, well, that would be understandable, too. A Puro Fuego is indeed a persuasive declaration of peerlessness — one assembled from the past, sure, but a peerless one all the same. Long live the Queen.