Lisbon:

Actress and singer Jennifer Lopez prepared “in secret” for three years to cut her new album Como ama una mujer, which she says is the culmination of her longstanding dream of ‘singing in Spanish’. Lopez told Publica magazine Sunday that it was years ago when she presented her first songs in Spanish to record producer Tommy Motolla. But when the time came for her personal interview with him, the Bronx-raised actress spoke in perfect English, whereupon Motolla told her “we’re going to record in English”.

“And that’s how my career began, but my lifelong dream was to record in Spanish,” she said. She described the all-Spanish numbers on the new album - which means ‘How a Woman Loves’ - as ‘very dramatic, like little soap operas’. Lopez, who is of Puerto Rican descent, said the album reflects ‘the passion’ with which women enter into love, “but that doesn’t mean that the album is only for women. It’s for anyone who at some time loved intensely”.