CRISTINA QUESADA: Releases "You Are The One" [LP / CD]

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“You Are The One” is a delicacy - moving and enjoyable. Cristina Quesada and her delicious voice give us a good handful of extraordinary minutes on this first album, which is a diverse and incredible collection, with a ton of covers and some original songs. The album is lucky enough to include a fantastic collaboration with Javi and Coral from BAND À PART and Luis Elefant. Cristina uses the songs that she has hand-selected by other artists and creates her own world with them, one that is as delicate as her way of singing is. And that is how she gives us this “You Are The One”, which is beyond a shadow of a doubt a huge delight to even the most stubborn music lovers.

Opening the album with a cover of “Just Like Honey”, revealing the similarities of THE JESUS & MARY CHAIN song with Phil Spector’s “Be My Baby”, is like betting on the winning horse right from the start. The song is two minutes full of intensity and sweetness, arranged with the wisdom of a goldsmith. After that comes “Ya No Puedo Más”, a previously unreleased song by our beloved NIZA, which was recorded along with the demos for that “Canciones De Temporada” and now stands here as an acoustic folk-pop delicacy with delicious arrangements. And since she dared to sing the first song in English, only to jump to Spanish for the next one, the third song on the album is “Faut-Il Que Je T'Aime”, an original song by France Gall that sounds really good dressed up in techno-pop with some baroque bursts that were made especially for this occasion - a French classic from the 60s reinterpreted in the purest early-80s, French techno-pop style. An unexpected surprise widens the breadth and range of an album that showed very early on its total lack of musical prejudices. A proper musical homage, and it’s like an ode written by a singer who has been proving her devotion since she started playing the violin at 7 years old. And, as if there were any doubt, the time for Portuguese has come, with a version of ABBA, “Cante (Enquanto Houver Canção)”, that passes through a bossa sieve with the same ease that flows through the melodies and the impeccable arrangements on the whole album. To close the A-side, a new surprise, a tremendous version of “My Favourite Girlfriend” by MILKYWAY, from the album of demos that Guille released just a few years ago.

The B-side opens with its super famous cover of “Pineapple Princess”, which gave her debut single - which sold out so quickly - its title. Though this time, the ukulele lets some of the spotlight go to the casiotones, the space effects, and the drum kits, so that we can travel at the speed of light to the center of Shibuya. Delicious and fun. We almost forgot about Italian! “Cielo” represents our Latin neighbors, written at the time by LITTLE PEGGY MARCH and arranged by none other than Ennio Morricone. And then Brazil gives us color again with an evocative, sunny, and summery song that has always been on Elefant’s list of favorites. “When I'm An Aeroplane” is the first of the original songs, written by Cristina Quesada herself and by Paul Bevoir, with a catchy chorus and celestial arrangements. And, did you think that we were going to leave J-pop out of this 11-song world-tour? Agnes Chan wrote “Hinageshi No Hana” in 1972 and Cristina, who isn’t afraid of any language, revives it in a magnificent soul-pop exercise. One of our current favorite groups, ALPACA SPORTS, also has some room on here with “Just For Fun”, which Paul collaborates on, playing the ukulele. And to close the album, we have another song by Cristina and Paul, the one that gives the album its name, “You Are The One”. It’s a marvelous song that would fit right in on a Christmas album by THE RONETTES, with echoes of Bacharach’s pianos, sung by Cristina in English and Spanish, and it even has Andreas Jonsson of ALPACA SPORTS singing choruses. As if there was any doubt that music knows no linguistic boundaries, “You Are The One” proves itself to be an exquisite and necessary journey through different countries, languages, and styles of music, thanks to Cristina’s magical voice and Javi and Coral’s hard work in the BAND À PART laboratory. It’s an enormous demonstration of the love of music, without limits and without restrictions.

TRACKLIST: 01 Just Like Honey  02 Ya No Puedo Más  03 Faut-Il Que Je T'Aime  04 Cante (Enquanto Houver Canção)  05 My Favourite Boyfriend  06 Pineapple Princess  07 Cielo  08 When I'm An Aeroplane  09 Hinageshi No Hana  10 Just For Fun  11 You Are The One