Sé delicado y esperar. Dame tiempo para darte todo lo que tengo.

How do songs become your songs?

I know why a certain Texas song always makes me feel warm and fuzzy. But, as we discovered a bit unexpectedly last night, there is now a Julieta Venegas song that's joined it as one of our songs.

If you don't know Venegas, you should. A Mexican singer-songwriter raised on the U.S. border in Tijuana, she has emerged as one of Mexico's leading female superstars in recent years, deftly melding a sincere pop sensibility, clever lyrics and traditional Mexican sounds.

It was a special pleasure to get to see her in an intimate setting like the Ogden Theater here in Denver last night. Backed by a fifteen person band, she made her way through some of her biggest hits in front of a small, but energized, audience. It turns out her voice is the real thing, nothing short of captivating in such an intimate venue.

If you don't listen to Latin music here, you would have never known about the show, but the fans who showed up clearly loved every second of the tight show. By the time she started into one of her biggest hits, Lento, she had every single person in the place singing along.

And that's when we just sort of realized that we now have a song of hers that's ours.

A while back, before we had satellite, we'd wake up every Saturday to Spanish videos on the local Univision station here. Along the way we became fans of Venegas' clever videos.

Like most things, you move on eventually to whatever new music catches your fancy. But last night as Lento kicked in, it felt as comfortable as an old pair of slippers. A romantic tour-de-force rendition and, in some ways, in our own language, the song is now a part of us.



If last night was any indication, this is an artist in full control of her craft. Her stripped down reinterpretations of her hits (the tour is in support of her recent MTV Unplugged CD) made the songs seem more personal and heartfelf. This is a young artist maturing gloriously and fully taking advantage of the opportunities her massive success in the Latin Music world have provided her.



Here's hoping she enjoyed her intimate Denver debut enough to keep coming back!

I hope to see her perform again and again.