Christian pop singer Jaci Velásquez makes her second appearance in this travelogue with a song that backs even further away from the only vaguely cool sound of her first: this is straight melodramatic balladry, with none of "Llegar a Tí"s light syncopation, crisp guitars, or silky MDO background vocals. There are strident drums, wispy guitars, and on the last chorus massed-choir background vocals -- but the affect is entirely different; where "Llegar" was an expression of (tasteful) joy, "Herida" is all about chest-beating pain.
Fan gossip is that the song is a pained-but-faithful response to her parents' divorce, and indeed the lyrics are full of wounded betrayal (the title means "How Is a Wound Healed") and, eventually, reconciliation through the sublimation of faith; but the song wasn't written by Velásquez, and it can easily be transposed onto a the failure of romantic or even sheerly platonic relationships.
It's full of the kind of banalities that aren't at all banal when you're in a position to express them, which means that despite the dull production and duller sentiments, her performance is genuinely moving, using both the high-octane belt required of any contemporary Christian singer and a lighter, more emotional register that owes a very slight (but real) debt to the emotional vocalizations of ranchera singers. It's not much, but it's something.
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