Music From The Motion Picture - Dance With Me (Epic/Sony) With the present craze over Latin music, it was only a matter of time before the movies got into the picture. Dance With Me - starring songbird Vanessa Williams and Latin heart-throb Chayanne - hopped on to the bandwagon pretty quickly.
The soundtrack climbed the music charts, no doubt helped by the more commercial presence of Vanessa Williams and Gloria Estefan, and was touted as one of the few 'Latin' albums that could make the crossover to the mainstream. Even 16 weeks after its release in the United States, the album still remains in the top 10 of the Billboard Latin charts.
As a memento of the film, this album does fine and, in fact, is a good introduction to some new Latin names such as Dark Latin Groove, Elvis Crespo, Ana Gabriel and Thalia which provide a good mix of salsa, merengue and samba.
The presence of Jon Secada's soppy Want You, Miss You, Love You and Black Machine's more urban Jazz Machine encroaches upon the Latin dance mood a little. Estefan's Heaven's What I Feel and the tub-thumpin' Pantera En Libertad by Monica Naranjo are no less pop-and-dance but at least they still keep the adrenalin pumping.
As a crossover album, Dance With Me has probably lost out to Ricky Martin's Spanglish album Vuelve which is still selling like hotcakes after more than half a year. If Dance With Me had kept strictly to its hot Latin roots it might have found more of a niche. But at least, this is a rare soundtrack which does not feature Celine Dion.