Time of Her life by David Jenison

Lumidee photo courtesy of Jeffrey Group

“I was a Dirty Dancing fanatic,” says Puerto Rican singer Lumidee, who covers the film’s Patrick Swayze-sung hit “She’s Like the Wind” on her new album, Unexpected. “I didn’t catch the movie in the theaters, but I watched it on video over and over again. I knew exactly what the song was when my overseas label presented the idea of covering it.”

The song, which gave Swayze a Top 10 hit in ‘87, was actually one of the soundtrack’s biggest hits internationally. Several artists have covered it for the European market, including Baywatch actor (and recent home-video star) David Hasselhoff for a German release, but Lumidee gives “She’s Like the Wind” an entirely different feel.

“We had to [change it up] since we couldn’t do it like Patrick Swayze did it,” she laughs. “The song was cool then, but we had to update it. At first, the idea seemed a little unsure and suspect, but the label really wanted that song and they said I could do whatever I wanted with it and make it my own. Basically that’s what we did, and the label loved it.”

“She’s Like the Wind,” which the singer recorded in English and Spanglish, is already a big hit at pop and R&B radio. It even set the stage for a second single, “Crazy” (featuring Pitbull), which will lead at radio in Europe, where Lumidee is actually a bigger star.

Looking back to 2003, the Spanish Harlem singer scored a summer smash with “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh),” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. While her follow-up single “Crashin’ a Party” didn’t catch on in the States, it gave Lumidee another hit in Europe, where her fame exploded. In fact, Unexpected was originally slated for European release only until American labels heard the new songs.

She explains, “We didn’t plan to release the new album here. Of course I hoped that it would come out here eventually, but I never thought it would be released here first. It just happened like that. I didn’t even know the [European label] started shopping the deal over here until they called and said two labels were interested. We did a deal with TVT [Records] and they released the album two months before it came out in Europe.” ...