As with Jerry Rivera's previous appearance in these pages, "Quiero" was released in both glossy romántica ballad form and awkward midtempo salsa form. The ballad got the video treatment and (I'm guessing) the majority of the crossover general-Latin airplay, while the salsa version would most likely have been limited to tropical or club formats. In any case, the ballad is what I'm considering.
And in the space of two years, Rivera (or his management's apparently accurate conception of what will make for a big hit) has not changed. "Quiero" is a lesser retread of "Ese" in just about every way, overblown and lugubrious where the earlier song is light and syncopated, and straight down the middle where the earlier song revels in its (however telegraphed) twist. Nylon-stringed guitar solos are the only interesting element in the production, and even they are not particularly engaging: smooth, fluid, and entirely superfluous, the fact that it spent five weeks at number one is mind-numbing, especially considering what else was going on in Latin Pop in 2001. The best song of the year will only match its reign.
The fact that this is our second and last encounter with him is a shame. Jerry Rivera was never one of the deathless voices of salsa music, but his early-90s pop-idol career was engaging and often delightful, from his 1992 breakthrough "Amores Como Lo Nuestro" (with its, uh, familiar horn intro) to the adorably cheesy "¿Qué Hay de Malo?", and I wish I'd known about hits like those when I was writing about the music that did make it to #1 in those years. His slow transformation into a romántica ballad singer over the later 90s was no doubt a canny move, growing up with his initial screaming-teens fanbase, and it notched him the hits we've met here, but he wasn't equipped to compete with the likes of Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias in that arena.
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