On Nights Like This

by Jason BirchmeierSoraya burst onto the Latin pop scene in early 1996 with her debut album, En Esta Noche, and its handful of hit singles. The album-opening ballad, "De Repente," is the clear highlight. Not only is it one of her career highlights, it was one of the best Latin pop chart-toppers of the mid-'90s. A pair of standout songs follow "De Repente" here -- "Quédate" and "Amor en Tus Ojos," both of which where charting singles -- and another pair close out the album: "En Esta Noche" and "Pueblito Viejo." One of Soraya's best albums, if not her best album overall, En Esta Noche got the Colombian-American singer/songwriter's career off to an amazing start and was a hard act to follow. [Soraya recorded an English-language version of En Esta Noche, titled On Nights Like This, that Universal released the same week as its preferable Spanish-language counterpart.]