MUSIC FOR YOU - MP3 ONline

While her single "Don't Say Goodbye" is about an ex-boyfriend who bailed on her once things were hitting full boil, Mexican pop singer Paulina Rubio didn't let the experience discourage her from the ways of love. Far from it. "I believe in love as much as I believe in life," the perky, quirky singer said. "Love for me is everything. I believe in 'make love, not war,' that's for sure. My music is about peace and no violence and the fire of love." "Don't Say Goodbye" has helped propel Rubio's first English-language album, Border Girl, to 84,000 in sales less than two weeks after its release (see "Paulina Rubio Hoping To Cross Over Border Like Shakira"). Nearly every song on the record is about the power of passion. Aside from using music to transcend boundaries — hence the album's title — she likes singing about the sparks that erupt from magical relationships best. Rubio is already gearing up for her next single, "The One You Love." She's scheduled to shoot the video for the song from August 6-8, though she hasn't yet chosen a director or treatment for the clip. The track, an effervescent pop melody colored with flamenco guitar, is about the fulfillment of satisfying someone else's needs: "I only wanna be the one you love/ I only wanna be the one you want/ Come and get me baby/ Let me loose inside your soul." Another highlight from Border Girl is Rubio's dancebeat-heavy cover of the Kiss song "I Was Made for Loving You," a cut the steamy songstress identifies with even though her music has practically nothing in common with Kiss' pyrotechnic bombast. "I just love that song," she enthused. "That's what I feel when I love someone. Since I [first encountered] the song 20 years ago, I felt it was totally me with those lyrics." As positive a force as love is in her life and work, Rubio acknowledges that love gone awry can be completely devastating, though she's convinced it's necessary to feel that agonizing bite in order to appreciate the elation of good lovin'. "Love is not perfect," she asserted. "And it's the ups and downs of love that make love. If you don't feel [that], how can you know when you're really in love?" It's a conundrum that fascinates Rubio. Though she dresses provocatively and appears caught up in the vacuous pleasures of throbbing pop when she's performing, she insists she's not just another dumb blonde. "I love philosophy a lot," she said. "I love to have a [round]table with my friends and just to talk about philosophers like Kafka, Nietzsche, Descartes, Socrates, Plato, Marx and Freud. "I've been reading Freud for the last month, and I realize that everything starts in the same point," she concluded, citing an axiom that underscored her belief in the yin and yang. "It's like a circle. If you don't feel sad some days, how can you know felicity? How can you feel that you're happy? You're happy sometimes, but it's not continuous, all day long. You need to feel the ups and downs. The opposite. Black and white — all those simple balances of life." —Jon Wiederhorn