Kylie Minogue’s X album is very memorable to me because it launched her comeback tour entitled KylieX2008. Because of it, I saw her perform live for the first time when that tour passed through Hong Kong in 2008. It was a great show, with Kylie coming out as a cheerleader and a mysterious Spanish dancer, among her many other costume changes. Kylie and Madonna have similar templates in their live shows. Keep them happy with the throwback hits, make sure they dance to the new danceable hits, and dress up in a snappy, sexy, seductive and self-assured manner. This template works for them every time! I was supposed to see her earlier in her 2005 Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour, but in mid-2005, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to cancel touring. I really thought I would never see her perform live anymore, considering that it was breast cancer and at that time, it was considered a death sentence. Fortunately, she was able to bounce back from the disease, and started recording new material in late 2006, the end result of which is this album. Some people say it’s a comeback album, but not in my book. Her last three dance-oriented albums – Light Years, Fever, and Body Language went multiplatinum and produced several memorable hits for her, so I’m sure there was that pressure to continue making hits. However, I do not see any of that pressure in Kylie’s work in X. I feel that at this point in her career, and after that breast cancer scare, she became freer with her decision-making in picking what songs to sing and which to reserve for future releases. She worked with many different producers in this album so what it lacks for cohesiveness it makes up by having these heterogeneous sounds and beats. For her efforts, she snagged a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Album – and I agree with the Grammy voters. However, because of the varied beats she had in this album, some of them make me excited and some do not. Interestingly, I do not feel any ambivalence to any song in this album, it’s either I like it or I don’t, and there is no compromising.

When I was listening to the songs in Shakira’s Oral Fixation Vol. 2, I thought that some of the songs there sounded awkward in terms of the way they were titled and the way the lyrics came out in English. This is because this album had a Spanish version Fijacion Oral Vol. 2. I could characterize my Spanish as somewhere around a Primary Grade 5 student, which I think is enough to appreciate songs, so I was thinking, I should really instead be listening to the Spanish version of this album – and appreciate it in its original intent. Although I am sure each song was translated with deftness and care, a lot of nuance is really lost in translation. I could compare it to reading Pablo Neruda’s poem in Spanish – and then reading the English translation. Poetry depends so much on the cadence of the words so a bit of that gets lost when translating it to another language. Songs are like poetry as well, so I think that is what happened to the English version of Fijacion Oral Vol. 2. To illustrate this, take for example the title of two songs in this album - “Dreams for Plans” and “Costume Makes the Clown.” They do sound like awkward translations from another language, don’t you think? Also, when I was listening to the song “Animal City” – something was a bit off with the lyrics. “It's an animal city / It's a cannibal world / So be obedient, don't argue / Some are ready to bite you, my love”. Scientifically, it would take an extreme situation for an animal to become a cannibal, so to compare an animal to a cannibal in terms of loving is well, weird! And cannibalism is not really just biting another animal – it is eating your own specie! Which really got me wondering, what was really the original message of this song because apparently, something got lost in translation here. Anyway, I should probably listen to the Spanish version and find out what she really wanted to say in this song and in the others as well.

I remember clearly how I first encountered the name Jennifer Lopez. I was at home watching TV with my parents when a news special about the autobiography film of the late Latina icon ‘Selena’ will finally be shown in the theaters. The actress playing the lead role is a mere newbie in the movie business. Although I wasn’t that familiar with Selena’s music and her impact to the Latino community, the actress named Jennifer Lopez has the looks, charisma and talent that the late Selena has. A couple more movies after, the actress who once played the role of a singer is now a singer making her own name in the music industry. She will no longer be known as ‘the girl who played Selena’. Nah, she’s Jennifer Lopez!

Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, sounds like something you would hear from one of J.K Rowling's best-selling Harry Potter novels, but it is the name of the bilingual, hit-making sensation known as Cardi B. The former American stripper turned internet sensation, television personality, rapper, singer and songwriter was born on the 11th of October, 1992, to a Dominican father and a Spanish-Trinidadian mother in the Bronx borough of New York, where she was also raised. After her high school education, she worked as an employee in a market before quitting and turning to stripping at the age of 19. Cardi B said that becoming a stripper was a positive for her life in many ways, stating that she became a stripper in order to escape poverty and domestic violence, having been in an abusive relationship at the time and it gave her the courage to leave that toxic situation and also motivated her to get a college education. "It really saved me from a lot of things. When I started stripping, I went back to school" said the rapper. She attended Borough of Manhattan Community College for a while before dropping out. It was during this phase of her life that she acquired the stage name "Cardi B" which was derived from Bacardi, a popular brand of rum which was her then stage name. The name which people used to call her in strip clubs birthed that which today is a household name worldwide!