Mina (1964 album)

This is Mina's first album released on the new Ri-Fi label after breaking up with Italdisc. Also, for the first time, the album is not a so-called compilation of already released singles, but consists entirely of unreleased tracks. The album mainly features cover versions of famous standards in English and Portuguese, as well as the songs "E se domani" and "Non illuderti" in Italian.

The album was released in Italy in May 1964, reaching number three on the chart.^[3] The album was also released abroad, in Spain (with an alternative track listing), in Canada under the title Mina We Love You – Benvenuta in Canada, and in Latin America as Mina, l'unica (only in Brazil with the original cover and title). In 2011, the Halidon label released a remastered version of the album.

For recording the album, Mina was awarded the Oscar del disco '64 prize.^[4]

Claudio Milano of OndaRock [it] wrote that jazz is the main character here, and Mina makes it pleasant, but only sometimes luxurious. He especially highlighted the song "Stella by Starlight" with an orchestral arrangement combining the nobility of Duke Ellington and the rhythmic vivacity of Latin American music. Mina, in his opinion, interprets the song with excellent tonal lightness, elegance and absolute mastery of intervals, which lead her from the middle frequencies to brilliant peaks rich in timbral and harmonic nuances.^[5] In 2015, the magazine Panorama named the album one of the ten essential albums by Mina.^[6]