shakira - ojos así (mirage mix)

the original song was something i heard on mtv during the so called latin explosion and along with "tú" and "inevitable" but this was the one that grabbed me. it definantly had to do with the arabic elements and i'm a sucker for that sort of fusion but this blend between latin and arabic comes natural in two ways. first foremost it's shakira's heritage as she's lebanese on through her father's side and spanish & italian on her mother's side. which brings to mind that there is a large amount of lebanese people that emigrated to mexico and that has eventually spread across both up and down the american continents.

all of the people of middle eastern descent loved this song and it really helped that it included a few lines sung in arabic, along with the durbake and ud that is audible. this is also probably why the internet had people believe that the song was a collaboration with popular egyptian singer amr diab. i also believed it hook, line and sinker and really didn't question it until a few years later when it was prove to be false information. that didn't really stopped me liking the song though and when i saw the single in my local recordshop a few years later i bought it without thinking.

i still don't know why the single was re-released in 2003 but it included two remixes and by prolific latin remixer & proder pablo flores so it was nothing to question. both version included were part of the original package in 1999 and the reason i said so was that i had heard the clubby thunder mix before but this as well in miscredited form as a "thunderpuss remix". something tells me it was so because around the time thunderpuss were the big name remixers along with hex hector following a couple of smash hits.

when i looked in the credits for the cdsingle it was when i found out that diab had nothing to to do with the song. also found out that pablo flores had to do with the production of "ojos así" along with shakira and flores' partner javier garza. however my favourite version of it all was the last version on the single called the mirage mix and this played up the arabic and latin elements and removed the four on the floor from the song. i get the feeling that flores (and maybe garza and shakira) just let loose and had a jam session with all the elements recorded for the original and this was the result. just pure brilliance.

buy here (itunes)