14.10.19

JUANES, “ME ENAMORA”

29th September, 2007

Wiki | Video

We haven't heard from Juanes since the triumph of "La Camisa Negra", and in the two years since he's beefed up his sound and gotten a haircut: the success of that application of guasca flavor to his tropical rock demands replication. So this taut boogie, with verses that sound like new wave-era stadium rock and a chorus with a cumbia shuffle buried beneath reggae bop, is an attempt to be even more crowdpleasing.

The lyrics are just as much full of dopey I'm-in-love cheer as the title "Me Enamora" (I'm in love with) would suggest: the clipped, staggered tension in the music on the verses is nowhere in the words. But the easy lope of the chorus, and particularly the ecstatic cock-crow of the guitar solo, is fully in line with the breezy sentiment.

He has found the furrow he will plow for years to come: cheerful, mostly uncomplicated music that provides a not-too-intrusive soundtrack to the listener's experience: the moodiness and ambition of some of his earlier appearances here are gone. It's a synechdoche for how rock has been assimilated into the larger pop world since the 1990s: acts like Maroon 5 or Imagine Dragons don't participate in the tradition of rock as carrier of musical or emotional authenticity, and just provide rock textures to the more easily-generalized emotions of pop.

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