Gloria Estefan Launches Holiday Album with Her Daughter, Her Grandson, and Even Her Pets!

December 26, 2022

Gloria Estefan's grandson will soon become a teenager, so the famous grandmother will no longer have—for the time being—a baby to spoil. And so as not to lose that sweet little voice that still calls to her, the singer decided to preserve forever the childish tone of her grandson's voice.

After last year's Thanksgiving dinner, the Cuban woman had the great idea of recording a holiday album—her first in almost three decades, following the success of Through Your Eyes which was released in 1993—alongside her only grandson, Sasha, and her daughter Emily, with some special guests, her pets!, to celebrate Christmas as a family.

"I always do [the dinner] for Thanksgiving at my house. And since Sasha was little, he loved doing shows for the family after dinner," the 65-year-old grandmother explained to People. "I played guitar. Emily played guitar or piano. In 2019 I told them, 'You know what? Let's do something different this year. Let's write a chorus, something small and then Sasha, you can take the microphone around the family and they can say what they're thankful for'."

But the idea of exploring the family's talent didn't come to her until two years later, when her grandson started to notice the imminent change in his voice.

"In 2021, Sasha told me, 'I think something strange is happening with my voice when I try to sing the high notes'. And he had grown four inches in the last few months. So I thought, 'Here it comes, the puberty train'. And at that moment it hit me that it would be fabulous to capture his child voice," she said.

Gloria proposed the idea of recording a holiday album Estefan Family Christmas, with which they could share the small family performances with the world with Emily and Sasha, who happily accepted. But her project also included the idea of her husband, Emilio, singing a duet with his only grandson, something he had never done before.

"He was excited. Well, what didn't excite him afterward is that I produced it, because he's always on the other side telling everyone what they have to do. But it turned out beautiful," Gloria assured. "It has an innocence in his voice and you really notice it in the song. And singing with his grandson was incredibly special for him."

But since this was a family project, two important members of the Estefan clan couldn't be left out: their pets!

"I thought: 'This is a family album. We absolutely have to have our pets because they are part of our family'. So Emily brought Nova, her dog, to the studio and Emily knows how to make her sing," she revealed, adding that her daughter's cats also participate. "I recorded [my dogs] at my house, because sometimes they let out these howls and we captured them that way. Quincy, my grandson's dog, is always sleeping and isn't much of a talker, so we recorded him snoring."