I want you to know that I you all make me smile broadly when I read your "Conga Comments"! Even the ones expressing your dislike for "whatever" makes me very thankful that you care so much about me, my family and my career. But alot of you are so distressed that I felt I should give you some answers to you queries before you go nuts with frustration.
First of all, I too have gotten "frustrated" with Sony's efforts on occasion and have many times forwarded your comments to pertinent people. But even with all their mistakes (and believe me, every record company has the same problems) I am one of their best loved and cared for artists (believe it or not). I have personal and close relationships with the top people at Sony and there is much love there. However, you as fans know that there are so many variables along the way such as radio programmers, release traffic, individual record store execs, etc., that it's difficult to control what goes on. For example, there was a massive marketing promotion planned for GHII in conjunction with the release of "Original Sin". There were huge TV marketing buys where I was included in the TV ads for the movie visually and with the song. We did no video for this song because VH1 and MTV will NOT play a video with movie footage in it. We were only going to AC radio with this song for the movie to save the big Top 40 push for OON. Everything was perfect, the stars were alligned (lol) and THEN..........the director of the movie lost his Mom and they pushed the movie release back to September AFTER the song was already out. There's absolutely nothing we could do about that one. So Sony has regrouped and bought a big TV campaign to take up the slack that the movie people left. I'm in L.A. for the Grammys and I just did a fantastic video for OON with Paula Walker, the director that did "Don't Wanna Lose You" and "Oye Mi Canto". I'm really happy with this one. It's very innovative and fresh (which is hard to achieve) and I hope you like it as much as I do.
Now for some of your other concerns. Why was "Live for Loving" etc., not included in GHII? It was one of the new songs on GH1 so I didn't even consider it. Why was "Don't Let This Moment" excluded after it was announced? I chose to give Nayib a shot with Y-Tu-Conga instead. I think you need a little inside info as to why a certain number of songs are included on albums. Contractually Sony only pays the "statutory rate" (the amount the federal government pays a writer for each song on an album) for usually 12 songs per album (in my case 13).If you put more songs on (and I could if I wanted to) the writers have to pro-rate the money and each of them make far less on each song. If they were all written by me I wouldn't care but they are all different writers who would then get penalized for me putting more songs on my album. I make money from every record as an artist but for these writers it's their only shot at making anything. For this reason I limit the albums to the amount of songs Sony pays full rate for, so the writers can make the most they can. It may look like a business decision but to me it's a very human one. Why did we not include Spanish? I thought of doing a "Double Album", one with English hits and one with Spanish. But I thought this would become very expensive for you, the fans. There will be an all-Spanish GH down the road. Why didn't I shoot a new picture? Bottom line.......I really dislike photo shoots! They take alot of time in the planning a new look, wardrobe, TIME, etc. And this would all have to have taken place during the holidays while I was recording and mixing the new songs and trying to make up to Em and Nayibe the fact that they had practically no holidays last year because of the millenniuum show. I couldn't use unseen "long-haired pictures" because my hair is shorter. So I was pretty limited in my choices. But the one I picked is one of my favorites. We used no color because I wanted "simplicity" for this cover. I chose the title GHII because I thought it was simple and to the point. All the other countless titles we came up with lacked something for me and I thought sounded "gimmicky". I also thought it was a great milestone to have a secong Greatest Hits. I loved the clean simplicity of both the picture and title and thought it represented best who I am. In any case, I'm sure I can't answer ALL your questions but I hope at least you get some answers. I also have chosen not to travel and kill myself with alot of promotion because, as I've said before, "I didn't work this hard to WORK this hard!" LOL.....Oh well, just know that regardless of how bad things might look to you we would NEVER just throw something out there. And alot of thought goes on as to how I present my image to the world. Of course, not everyone will agree with or like every choice I make. But I do care deeply about how you, my fans, think and that is why I've written you this mail. I love you all and thank you once again for being so loyal and caring so much! By the way, I'm trying to write all or most of my next English language album so it will be awhile before you hear a new original English album. Which was another reason I let Sony release this GHII now. Especially since you'll probably see GHSpanish before my next original album. You guys can let me know when you'll be wanting THAT one!
Los quiero (I love you)!!
gloria