MANÁ FT. PRINCE ROYCE, “EL VERDADERO AMOR PERDONA”

10th December, 2011

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Over the years that I've been conducting this travelogue I have occasionally run into cases where it's not clear which version of a song is supposed to be represented on the chart, since multiple versions are in circulation at once. Billboard lists this chart entry as "Maná Featuring Prince Royce," but from my memories of Latin radio in Phoenix in late 2011 and 2012, Maná's original plodding dirge was played far more frequently; I only vaguely recognized the bachata-con-Royce version when listening to it to write this.

Of course, other markets presumably had different experiences: New York radio, for example, would surely have promoted the Dominican element over the Mexican. And one of the charms of the old airplay-only method of chart calculation was that the multiple versions and remixes playing on various slightly different radio formats could be collapsed into sharing a single chart entry. Which became part of the strategy for releasing multiple versions to multiple formats at once: get enough traction on each, and your song would do all the better on the overall chart. But I don't know that I've heard a more awkward combination of genres  than this power ballad-meets-airy bachata that Billboard considered the primary version in 2011.

Ten years later, the YouTube video for Maná's original has more than three times the views than the version with Prince Royce interpolating half the lines in his lovely, emotionally vacant falsetto does. It's easy to read this collaboration as a cynical move: "El Verdadero Amor Perdona" (True love forgives) was the third single from Drama y Luz, but didn't look likely to replicate the success of its two predecessors, both of which appeared here, so goosing its chances by adding a flavor-of-the-year prettyboy singer and a generic bachata bed (the hoary rock en español band played much better bachata when Juan Luis Guerra was their guest) for a conveniently-timed "deluxe edition" of the album worked to keep Maná's streak of Hot Latin #1s alive.

As you may have gathered, I'm not a big fan of either the original or its bachatification. The chorus' rewrite of 1 Corinthians 13 to beg a betrayed lover to take the singer back is emotionally manipulative in both the good sense (pop artisans know how to use chord changes and tension-and-release dynamics to engineer feelings), and the bad ("if you don't forgive me, you never loved me"-ass argumentation). It's easier to take the song less seriously when Prince Royce sings half the lines in his glib, cherubic manner, which might make it even more insidious.

Not that demanding perfect moral rectitude from pop is a meaningful, much less achiveable, goal: pop exists to embody emotions, and the emotion embodied here is a widely experienced and expressed one. My complaint is that it fails to make that emotion irresistible to me: it sounds just as stunted and navel-gazing as it is.

ROMEO SANTOS FT. USHER, “PROMISE”

29th October, 2011

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I think I've mentioned here before that in the early 2010s I was so enamored by bachata and convinced of the truth of the thirty-year cycle of popular music that I believed quite seriously that the future of R&B and romantic music in general was bachata.

(That thirty-year cycle, in brief: jazz had risen in the 1920s, displaced parlor song by the 1940s, then become the establishment; rock & roll had risen in the 1950s, displaced dancefloor orchestras by the 1970s, then become the establishment; hip-hop and electronic dance had risen in the 1980s, displaced rock bands by the 2000s, and so in the 2010s we were due for another shakeup. With perhaps terminal optimism, I thought it would be interestingly unexpected if the future of popular music was Afro-Latin as well as African-American.)

I even made a confident prediction at one point that the first Anglophone R&B singer to make a bachata record would signal a shift in Anglophone tastes. That Usher was the first big R&B star to sing on a bachata song did not disappoint me; but its failure to cross over did. "Promise" only rose to #83 on the Hot 100, shut out of pop radio play as a matter of course, although apparently it was in heavy rotation on MTV (to the degree that any music videos were; the channel had been in an all-reality format for years). But it was a massive hit on Latin radio, spending a total of ten weeks at #1 on the Hot Latin chart over the winter of 2011/2012.

Compare it to the last English/Spanish duet that went to #1 in the winter, "Looking for Paradise". As a collaboration, it's far more successful: Romeo's and Usher's voices are well-matched, Romeo taking the higher falsetto and Usher maintaining his usual liquid tonality without showboating; he's a guest here, and behaves like one. But the skittering rhythm, fluid guitar picking, and fluttering melodies are, as ever, the most memorable element of a bachata song. Although the lyrics suffer slightly from the usual dual-language pop problem of the Spanish lyrics being more poetically expressive than the English, Romeo is not engaging in the extended metaphors and ornate similes that he did with Aventura or on his own: it's consciously an attempt at a big-tent crossover hit, and so circles around the single idea of a man feeling himself trapped by love, and submitting to it gladly, if only he can be assured that his beloved will be faithful to him.

The video takes pains to make clear that Romeo and Usher are both romancing different women, perhaps because the danger of the song being read as two men singing to each other was too high, something that the frequent reiteration of "mami" and "girl" in the chorus already safeguards against. Given R&B history, the meathead association of falsetto singing with suspect heterosexuality is as racist as it is homophobic; but we are still squarely in the "no homo" era, and male sex symbols aimed at a female audience can't be too careful.

Of course bachata did not take over R&B; eventually it even ebbed from mass popularity in the pan-Latin circles represented by the chart, retreating to its Dominican-diasporic roots. But I was not entirely wrong about the thirty-year cycle: although the completeness of earlier displacements has always been overstated, which means that living through another is harder to recognize, because there's always more continuity visible in the present than the tidy periodizations of history suggest. But I would suggest that the most influential (if not necessarily the most profitable) currents of modern pop are now generally Afro-Latin in origin. I'll have more to say about this as we get to it; but while this song may be understood as something of a dead end, it's better constructed and more elegant than many such.

RICARDO ARJONA, “EL AMOR”

22nd October, 2011

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After a couple of entries talking about the lowbrow influence of hip-hop and more particularly the English language, it's something to turn to one of Latin Pop's Very Self-Serious Singer-Songwriters and get what is essentially a literary prank in pop-song clothing.

"El Amor" is probably one of the most common titles in Spanish-language pop, just like its English-language equivalent "Love" would be. The ballad tempo and swelling instrumentation encourages the listener to expect that it will be just one more oblation placed on the altar of popular music's most revered ideal and patron, romantic love. Even Arjona's vocal phrasing gives nothing of the game away: if you don't know much Spanish or don't pay attention to lyrics, he could just be singing earnestly in praise of love. Even the first few lines could go either way:

"El amor tiene firma de autor en las causas perdidas / El amor siempre empieza soñando y termina en insomnio" (Love has an author's signature in lost causes / Love always begins by dreaming and ends in insomnia")

So far, so conventional; this is the Renaissance-era "love is madness, but oh how sweet" sentiment. Which is a bit more old-fashioned than the ususal Romantic-era oaths of heroic devotion which is where most contemporary pop language ultimately derives from, but still fits comfortably within the pop canon. But it's the next lines that makes Arjona's intentions clear:

"Es un acto profundo de fe que huele a mentira / El amor baila al son que le toquen, sea Dios o el demonio" (It is a profound act of faith that smells of lies / Love dances to the tune of the one who plays, whether God or the devil")

Now this is bracing cynicism, of a kind which is not unknown in Spanish (or any other European) literature, but extremely rare in pop. My metaphor earlier of the devotional altar which pop has erected to romantic love is only somewhat hyperbolic; despite the strenuous efforts of many songwriters, it could easily be argued that the bulk of pop musicians are really just an adjunct of the falling-in-love industry, like diamond miners, florists, and interior decorators.

It's tempting to quote and translate the rest of the lyrics here, but I'll limit myself to the chorus:

"El amor es un ingrato que te eleva por un rato

Y te desploma porque si

El amor es dos en uno que al final no son ninguno

Y se acostumbran a mentir

El amor es la belleza que se nutre de tristeza

Y al final siempre se va"

(Love is a churl that raises you up for a short time

And lets you down just because

Love is the two-in-one that in the end add up to nothing

And accustom themselves to lying

Love is the beauty that nurtures itself on sorrow

And in the end always goes away)

The video matches the cynical tone of the lyrics perfectly: a black-and-white film of a wedding taking place in a venerable cathedral in Mexico City, with Arjona singing at the organ, in the pulpit, and in a pew: while the bride and groom kneel before the officiating priest, the couples in the audience glance, squirm, bicker and finally break out into an enormous brawl while the music crashes around them, while the bride flees down the aisle. But then Arjona stops singing, and everything is back to normal: it was all in the bride's head, and she looks nervously around while the rice is thrown as they descend the church steps.

In an interview, Arjona even claimed that the song was meant as a corrective to the general trend of pop: "So many good things about love have been shown, that somebody had to turn it around and tell the bad ones." It was also the lead single off of his new album after going independent, and the song's rejection of typical sentiment is very much in line with an artist's rejection of label pressures and demands. But it was also a return to his classic rock-ballad style after a politically-engaged, stripped-down tropical album, the singles from which (about Cuba, autobiographical, and about sex) had failed to catch fire commercially; a certain amout of cynicism on Arjona's part no doubt felt earned.

The cynicism worked, of course, and shot him to #1, even if only for a week. It's by far my favorite Arjona song I've met on this travelogue, although since learning about the Poquita Ropa singles I can only mourn not getting to write about them too. The chart won't have time for Very Self-Serious Singer-Songwriters much longer, though, and it's nice to appreciate them while I still can.

PITBULL FT. MARC ANTHONY, “RAIN OVER ME”

15th October, 2011

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On Mr. Worldwide's last visit to these shores, I noted that the meatheaded dumbness of the English-language lyrics stood in contrast to the many floridly poetic Spanish lyrics that preceded his over the past quarter century. Well, he raps half a verse in Spanish here, and it's just as dumb. I recall reading an Argentinean blogger around this time who sniffed at the Latin rappers and Mexican regional musicians who were having such great success in the United States, suggesting that the low education level of immigrant populations meant that even when Spanish was their native language it was still a rudimentary, ignorant peasant Spanish untouched by the language's centuries-old literary tradition. Which may well be true; but to quote Mark Sinker it's good not bad. People making the same arguments about English-language rappers would be self-evidently classist and racist; but a lot of intra-Hispanic prejudice is invisible to English speakers because of their automatic association of "Hispanic" with "subaltern."

Against which this song flails mightily. Pitbull and Marc Anthony are two immensely wealthy white-coded men singing and rapping about generic love using liquid imagery (which also happens to plug the vodka brand one of them owns) over a very expensive trance-pop production, itself courtesy of white-coded immigrants. The list of writers and producers on "Rain Over Me" is extensive, but Swedish producer and co-writer RedOne, whose signature heat-blast synth sound is all over early-2010s pop, was born in Morocco, and his collaborators Bilal "The Chef" Hajji, Rachid "Rush" Aziz, and Achraf "AJ" Janussi have similar SWANA backgrounds. We're very far from the Dirty South rap and Nuyorican salsa scenes where the headliners first made their names: the carefully generic adrenaline fuel behind their voices is very intentionally crafted to sound from nowhere in particular, a global (or worldwide) noise that flattens genre as much as nationality or race.

But this is also a victory lap for Pitbull; after the studied genericism of his lyrics for "Give Me Everything," he lets his triumphalist instincts take over in the second verse here, crowing about Latins being on track to be the "new majority" in the US and giving a chat-up line in working-class Spanish. Marc Anthony's chorus, which could have been sung by anyone and makes little use of his gifts, ends up being primarily another flex, a highly expensive guest appearance singing the kind of English-as-a-second-language pabulum that is Swedish pop's specialty. Let what rain over him? There is no idiom in English that this line gestures toward; but it was too obviously anodyne a song for there to even have been a notable rumor that it was really about golden showers.

WISIN Y YANDEL, “TU OLOR”

8th October, 2011

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Wisin y Yandel's seventh top-lining #1 (ninth if we count features and remixes) in five years sees them still acting as a bellweather for urban Latin pop. Nesty and El Nasi's slick, turbo-charged production is in line with the trancey synths and urgent dance-pop that have been the signature sound of the summer of 2011, and the syncopated rhythm once more recalls the reggaetón beat without actually using the dembow riddim.

"Tu Olor" was the second single off the duo's seventh album, and comparing it to the lead single "Zun Zun Rompiendo Cadenas", which did not reach #1, is a little instructive. "Zun Zun" was much more firmly an electro song aimed at crossover dancefloor success, with Yandel's voice flanged all to hell by AutoTune; "Tu Olor" is grittier and even more romantic, in the surly masculine way that hip-hop-derived forms tend to be.

The title means "your scent," and Yandel's chorus, "Se me quedó tu olor en mi ropa / la fragancia de tu piel, tu rico sabor a miel / que probé yo de tu boca / Vamo' a repetirlo mami una y otra y otra y otra vez" is a minor masterpiece of erotic pop poetry: "Your scent is still in my clothes / the fragrance of your skin, the sweet honey flavor / that I tasted from your mouth / Let's do it again mami again and again and again." Meanwhile, Wisin's verses expand the narrative from pure nostalgic eroticism: it's much more indirect, but essentially the same premise as T-Pain's 2005 classic "I'm 'n Luv (Wit a Stripper)." And the video turns it into a high-octane action movie with a lot of expensive shots and very little meaning, except of course to communicate how successful and important the performers at its center are.

It was only #1 for a week, though: in a chart where Don Omar's "Taboo" and Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" were still hanging around, it was a relatively small blip that spoke to the dedication of the W&Y fanbase rather than the duo's global dominance in 2011. We'll see them again, in a stronger position.

MANÁ, “AMOR CLANDESTINO”

27th August, 2011

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The last time Maná had two singles in a row go to #1 was in 2006, when "Labios Compartidos" and "Bendita Tu Luz" followed in quick succession. That was during the first flowering of reggaetón, and my reaction was a simmering displeasure at such old-fashioned rock being dragged out again as if in counterpoint. Here in 2011 it is a similarly dance-friendly moment, with Maná appearing between big splashy international hits, and it feels more than ever like a kind of quiet culture war.

"Lluvia al Corazón" had sat at #1 for three weeks in the spring, and "Amor Clandestino" only popped in for a week; and not to suggest that my tastes are representative of the broader Latin Pop audience's, but I kind of liked the former, and think the latter is Maná at their self-important, pretentious, fauxthentic worst.

Opening with Fher's extremely basic harmonica skills signals that this is going to be a bluesy, authentic rock song, but there's no groove here, just a succession of dramatic builds, key changes and string sections shoring up the slow bits while Fher moans about love that has to be conducted in secret for unspecified reasons. The video gives a number of specifics, none laudable: one person is cheating on their partner, another is a tutor coming on to their student, a third is falling in love with a sex worker trying to keep it professional. The lyrics are certainly in a tradition of self-involved love poetry in which men bemoan the circumstances that prevent them from loving openly and look forward to the ever-delayed day in which they will be allowed to.

Could it be read as a closeted gay song? Of course, and that's the only thing that redeems it, and makes it feel like it's participating in the pop ethos of the 2010s. In the video, a woman looking like she's going towards Fher but instead kissing another woman in an extremely male-gaze shot is the closest we get.

The band is visibly aging, and the concurrent transition to HD videos does them no favors. Still, the next Maná single will also appear here, a record that I believe only Enrique Iglesias has matched. And of course, some day I'll be sorry not to have Maná to kick around any more.

PITBULL FT. NE-YO, AFROJACK & NAYER, “GIVE ME EVERYTHING”

30th July, 2011

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There are a bunch of different ways to take the fact that this song, sung and rapped entirely in English save for the inevitable "dale," went to #1 on the Hot Latin chart in the summer of 2011. The most obvious is that it was inescapable regardless of location or native language: #1 on the Hot 100, Mainstream Top 4, and US Ryhthmic, in addition to hitting #1 in eleven different countries including Mexico; in the US, only Adele, LMFAO, and Katy Perry (twice) outperformed it over the course of the year. A spiritual descendent of the Black Eyed Peas' gloriously meatheaded 2009 "Boom Boom Pow"/"I Got a Feeling" duology, as well as extending the apocalyptic mood that Ke$ha expressed, both in her own songs as well as in writing Britney Spears' "Till the World Ends," "Give Me Everything" was Pitbull's apotheosis moment, the peak from which all subsequent material would, with perhaps one exception, be an inevitable descent.

But another way to take it is as a corruption of the Spanish-language ideals of the Latin radio market. Of course the vast bulk of the Latin radio audience in the United States would speak some or even primarily English; but the dumb corniness of Mr. Armando Pérez's rhymes and sentiment here are an affront to the many poetic, moving, profound Spanish lyricists who have occupied this space in weeks and years past. Of course, the irony is that when Pitbull was rapping partly in Spanish, he never had a hope of hitting #1. His output over the previous couple of years had included some of my favorite pop of the era, including "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)", "Watagatapitusberry", "Armada Latina", and an album cut that got radio play in my region, "Orgullo", a celebration of Latin immigrantion to the US; but it took a global hit, expressed in as generic terms as possible, to cross the finish line.

A third way to take it is as a premonition of things to come. In 2011, the Hot Latin chart was still radio-only, which meant that it was drawn from airplay on radio stations in a Latin Pop format; but the streaming era, which dumps anything tagged "Latin" in the metadata onto the chart and sorts it by most played, is fast approaching. I don't have reporting to back this up, but my suspicion is that a lot of "Give Me Everything's" Latin Pop radio airplay was similarly algorithmically determined on (for example) Clear Channel stations that didn't employ a DJ, just played whatever was popular and could be considered Latin. Pitbull (and hook singer Nayer Regalado) being very loudly Cuban-American, this fit the bill.

But a fourth way is to simply engage with it as a song, a collaboration between four major musicians (well, three and Armando's frequent hook singer). Its broad popularity across formats was undeniable; and while a lot of that is no doubt due to Pitbull's cheerful, approachable rapping, Dutch producer Afrojack's hustling, trance-derived sonic landscape and perpetual R&B underdog Ne-Yo's creamy chorus deserve the bulk of the song's architectural credit: if (like so much pop of the era) it's essentially an advertisement for spending time and money at the club, it's a polished, even elegant ad. And I won't pretend that my heart wasn't caught every time the radio didn't cut off the disarmingly tender descending piano figure that closes the single.

DON OMAR, “TABOO”

16th July, 2011

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When I wrote this blog's entry on the 1990 #1 "Lambada", I was still in many ways blindly groping in the dark when it came to hearing and describing music from a non-rock tradtition. But I'm grateful to the younger version of myself for not getting into the song's background (was I too rushed to look at Wikipedia that week?), because it gives me a chance to do it for this revival.

"Taboo" follows directly in the pattern of Don Omar's enormous crossover success with "Danza Kuduro", another turbo-slick rewrite of a big splashy hook from the Lusophone world that was itself raiding from another, slightly older tradition. This time he's pilfering from French producers Kaoma's bandwagon-jumping "Lambada," a reinterpretation of the Brazilian Maria Ferreira's 1986 lambada hit "Chorando Se Foi" which was itself based on Bolivian folkloric group Los Kjarkas' "Llorando Se Fue", first recorded in 1981.

Each subsequent version keeps the swooning melody, but ups the party-anthem quality, and Don Omar's "Taboo," coming twenty-two years after Kaoma had their moment in the sun, has none of Los Kjarkas' quality of lamentation, even as he keeps several of their original lyrics intact; but he switches from Spanish to Portuguese from verse to verse, as the music video switches locations from Puerto Rico to Rio de Janeiro -- and also inserts shots from the then-current fifth movie in the Fast & the Furious franchise, which happened to also include setpieces in those locations, and in which Omar himself appeared.

Music as an extruded byproduct of international corporate entertainment synergy is more or less representative of where things stood in the early 2010s. The recording won "Urban Song of the Year" at the ASCAP awards, a traditional recognition of revenue generated; but despite drawing from a rich history, it was a terminus, a dead end that led to nothing more; even the later return to reggaetón that raided Latin music history left it alone.

And why is it called "Taboo"? Because of the "forbidden dance" press legend around the lambada, presumably. Everything else about it is shiny and ersatz; of course you print the legend.

ROMEO SANTOS, “YOU”

28th May, 2011

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A little over a year after Aventura's departure ("Dile al Amor"'s last week at #1 was April 10, 2010), their former frontman returns with a song that at first blush sounds as though nothing has changed. Bori Rivera's fluid fingerpicked guitar solos are a little less show-stealing than Lenny Santos', but they're very much working in the same smoky bachata + r&b idiom, and Giselle Moya's breathy vocals delivering the English one-word refrain functions just as she had on "Por un Segundo", as an erotic signpost marking the object of the lyrics' extravagant desire.

But to the degree that Aventura was a boy band, Romeo's solo debut participates in a longstanding tradition: more sexually explicit, more grown-up, more concerned with establishing his individual persona separate from that of the group. Structurally, "You" is an exercise in delayed gratification, teasing the listener for four unbroken verses of increasingly florid come-ons, as Romeo sings about drinking his lover's fluids and devouring her for hours, before finally hitting a chorus. Then come the taut guitar solos, a spacey bridge, and one more, slightly less impactful chorus. If it's not intended to be analogous to the rhythms of sex, it doesn't do anything to deter the comparison.

At the time I enjoyed it as a splash of cool bachata intermixed with many other flavors on the radio, as I jumped between Spanish- and English-language stations without compunction, seeking music rather than advertising. I don't believe the horniness made much of an impression, only the romanticism and the mild frisson of psychedelic beauty in Giselle's coos. I was still under the impression that bachata might become popular enough to be absorbed into the r&b mainstream, not really yet aware of how closely identified with a specifically Dominican identity it is and would remain.

Eleven years and many millions of A&R dollars later, there are no more international bachata stars than there were in 2011, as the urbano musics whose stars have risen in the meantime have eclipsed it, and it now sounds slightly old-fashioned, no longer thrillingly modern as it was in the pre-streaming early 2010s, when niches could still be big enough to make an impact without ever having to submit to the indignity of going viral.

MANÁ, “LLUVIA AL CORAZÓN”

2nd April, 2011

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I've had plenty of criticisms of Maná to make in these pages, and this song is far from making a convert of me: musically it's just as generic and earnest and toothless as all the rest of their #1s. And maybe it's just catching me in a particularly receptive mood; but the sentiment of the song for once matches the heroic-inspirational tone of the instrumentation, and also is actually a noble (if still inevitably limited and flat-footed) sentiment.

"Lluvia al Corazón" means "rain in the heart," and the thrust of the lyric, that a woman (possibly a lover, though she needn't be -- in interviews Fher said she could also be a sister, or a friend) is experiencing depression or worse and expressing suicidal thoughts, and the singer's response is to be with her, to help her through it, and to give her hope. As a therapeutic strategy it's insufficient and probably even harmful in parts (the line "si te vas así yo moriré" (if you go like this i'll die) is at best ill-considered), but I've been so down on Maná that even their hearts being the right place, however clumsy they are about it, is a pleasant surprise.

But then again, maybe that's just my own sentimentality about depression speaking. I was less forgiving of bathos at #1 when the subject was neglectful parenting or domestic abuse, after all. And Maná's generic rock is no better, theoretically, than Franco de Vita's generic pomp or Héctor el Father's generic moody reggaetón; but I have used self-important rock to feel better during depression, in ways I have not used other kinds of self-important music, so once more I spend a Maná entry talking about solipsism. But for a change, this time it's my own.

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS FT. WISIN Y YANDEL, “NO ME DIGAS QUE NO”

19th March, 2011

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I was pretty harsh about Enrique's last appearance here, in part because I knew this was coming and was girding my loins in advance. The title of the song, and the cockily-crowed refrain, translate to "Don't Tell Me No," and despite the pseudo-romantic way he dresses it up and the good-time party vibes a team of producers and co-stars surrounds it with, the most forceful sentiment of the song remains a refusal to listen, an overriding of consent, the normalization of assault as a natural extension of masculine desire.

The big trancey synths and hopping club music behind it are extremely early 2010s, post-subprime pop as louche, privileged atavism (and the opposite of what, for example, Ke$ha was using the same basic template to express at the time). The soaring chorus, with its reduplicated, shouting, thin-voiced Enriques, even recalls the hooky pop-punk of ten years earlier, another genre that in its most popular expression was a black hole of whiny male self-regard. There's not a hint of dembow in the rhythm despite classic reggaetón producers Nesty and Victor El Nasi being involved: indeed, only Wisin's rap verse even plays with syncopation at all. Everything else is a foursquare, flat-footed beat that even the whitest listener can pogo along to.

It was only at #1 for a week, sandwiched between "Corazón Sin Cara," and in Iglesias' discography is little more than a footnote compared to the much more massive smashes from his bilingual album Euphoria: "I Like It" and "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)" were blanketing Anglophone airwaves, while "Cuando Me Enamoró" still lingered on Spanish-language radio. Given his English-language success, it will be a few years before Enrique returns to this travelogue, while Doble-U y Yandel will be a more constant presence. But that's another story.

RICKY MARTIN FT. NATALIA JIMÉNEZ, “LO MEJOR DE MI VIDA ERES TÚ”

12th February, 2011

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I didn't mean to wait to write about this song until June, but it's an appropriate way to mark Pride: Ricky Martin's first (and to date only) #1 Hot Latin song since coming out as gay in 2010. a shot of feel-good pop-reggae that Martin suggested to producer Desmond Child as his own version of "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

Which as a symbol for how gay liberation was codified and marketed in the early 2010s could hardly be bettered: a wealthy white hunk singing a domestic love song generic enough to be pitched as much to one's child (Martin's interviews at the time were filled with happiness over his twin sons, then three years old) as to a lover of any gender. The excision of his featured guest in the video version of the track (Martin takes her verse instead, and she's relegated to background hums and harmonies) might be read as ambiguating the song's referent, since otherwise it would be too easy to read as a man and woman singing heterosexually to each other, but instead it ends up seeming a touch narcissistic, something which not all the United Colors of Benetton imagery in the video can assuage.

The English-language version of the song, "The Best Thing About Me Is You", featured British blue-eyed soul yowler Joss Stone, and her replacement in the Spanish-language version by Natalia Jiménez, who had recently gone solo from Madrid (soon relocated to Mexico) pop-rock band La Quinta Estación, was part of a push by Sony to make Jiménez a global star which never really happened. As this is Jiménez' only appearance here, it's worth remarking a bit on her career: an expressive, powerful singer in a very Spanish tradition of full-bore dramatics, she's struggled to find material that matches her instrument since the breakup of 5a. Estación. Their 2009 dramatic rock single "Que Te Quería" (Who loved you) was my introduction to her singing on Phoenix-area Spanish-language radio, and it was the highest they ever charted in the U.S., although they had been regular hitmakers in Spain and Mexico for the past half-decade. Since then, however the most notable highlights of her career have been a tribute album to ranchera singer Jenni River and a stint as a judge on Mexico's version of The Voice. 

This is our farewell to Ricky Martin as well, as he aged out of the pop market (in addition to, perhaps, taking himself off the board for the projected dreams of heterosexual teenage girls) and into a role as a senior statesman and conscience of pop; he will spend the next decade exterting his influence to advocate for gay rights and for justice for Puerto Ricans. It's nice to leave him sounding so relaxed and happy after an imperial decade performing hetero horniness and emotional tribulation; even if "Lo Mejor de Mi Vida Eres Tú" isn't any great shakes as a song, it remains a considerable vibe. At its worst, it's an instance of pop as Live Laugh Love wall art, a cliché that can nevertheless resonate, because people are not as complicated as we like to pretend we are.