At last, Flex's reign at the top of the Hot Latin Chart in 2008 has come to an end: and it's replaced by a power ballad that will carry us through the rest of the year. "No Me Doy Por Vencido" was going to be the song Luis Fonsi was remembered for, at least until 2017 happened and all calculations changed.
Because it's a giant of a song, purpose-built to be all things to all people. Before being included on Fonsi's album Palabras del Silencio, it first appeared on an album entitled AT&T Team USA Soundtrack, a compilation of vaguely inspirational songs for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing underwritten by a telecoms giant, on which Fonsi appears last, the sole Spanish-language singer in an album full of all-Americans like 3 Doors Down, Taylor Swift, Chris Brown, Sheryl Crow, Nelly, and (remember, it's 2008) something called Clique Girlz. And the song very much belongs to the sporting-championship genre: "No Me Doy Por Vencido" translates as "I do not give up," and Fonsi's throat-straining choruses are perfectly shaped for soundtracking underdog-victory montages.
The problem is that the song is not actually about the triumph of the human spirit against impossible odds: the lyrics are plainly and unequivocally the self-assertive moaning of a guy who is continuing to bother a woman after she has politely declined. And although as a piece of Western media it is certainly not alone in its conception of romance as a man chest-beatingly refusing to surrender to the decisions of the woman he has determined will be his mate, it's hard for me to take it as being genuinely romantic. As, I should note, millions of women the world over have done; pop, because it is pop, can never be limited to a single reading.
In any case, Fonsi's label knew a hit when they heard one, and it was rushed out in banda, ranchera, bachata and urbano versions; but the slight mariachi horns on the original are all the regional accents it needs. It's a hell of a chorus, but like so many other power ballads, it doesn't do enough to earn those soaring notes.
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