CoronaVinyl Day 293 (M): Primitive Love by Miami Sound Machine

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "M," and my selection was Miami Sound Machine's ninth studio album, 1985's Primitive Love.

The band was formed in Miami in 1975 by Emilio Estefan, Jr. as the Miami Latin Boys, and they changed their name to Miami Sound Machine two years later.  Also in 1975, Estefan met Gloria Garcia Fajardo, and Estefan invited her to join the group later that year.  She was still in college at the University of Miami, and her only stipulation was that she could only perform on weekends, so that her studies wouldn't be interrupted.  The two started dating and eventually married in 1978, a year after the group released its first album.  Gloria Estefan graduated from the University of Miami in 1979 with a B.A. in psychology, but as you know, she decided to stay with the group and pursue music.

The group was originally comprised of six Cuban-Americans, but it expanded over the years, as they honed their Latin-tinged pop and R&B sound.  Primitive Love was their breakthrough album, reaching #23 on the Billboard album charts and #1 on the Billboard Latin album chart.  It eventually went triple platinum in the U.S.

The album produced four Top 25 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including three Top 10 songs:  "Words Get in the Way" (#5), "Bad Boy" (#8), "Conga" (#10), and "Falling in Love (Uh-Oh)" (#25).  The album is a combination of pop, ballads, and dance music, often behind Latin-infused rhythms and percussion.

From there, the band's success continued over the next several years, changing their name to Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine for the next album, 1987's Let It Loose, which went to #6 on the Billboard album chart and also went triple platinum in the U.S.  By 1989, the group had disbanded, and Gloria went on to a successful solo career, despite being in a horrific bus crash in 1990 that left her with a fractured spine and required a year of rehab before she could return to performing.  She has continued to make music over the last three decades.  As a solo artist, she has had 8 Top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including three Top 10s and two #1s (1989's "Don't Wanna Lose You" and 1991's "Coming Out of the Dark").

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Bad Boy"
This is a poppy song with a catchy-as-hell chorus.  It was not only the opening song for the hit movie Three Men and A Baby, but the chorus was also later adopted by Bad Boy Records' Mase in his 1997 hit "Feels So Good."

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Conga"
I've always liked this song, but it is forever enshrined in a special place in my heart after my trip to Oktoberfest in 2010, when a bunch of us went to a late-night bar/club, and a band had been playing, but it wasn't really getting people going.  Everyone was just kind of standing around, and no one was really on the dance floor.  After the band was done, a DJ came on, and "Conga" was the first song he played.  Within the first few bars of the song, people went absolutely ape shit.  People were dropping beer bottles on the ground and throwing tables out of the way to get to the dance floor.  After that, it was a fucking party, and one of my friends didn't realize there was broken glass all over the dance floor, as he put his hands down to shake his ass, coming up only to realize his hands were all bloody.  Thankfully, we had consumed enough bier and Jager that he didn't remember it the next morning, but instead woke up and asked why his jeans were covered in blood.  Good times.