ENRIQUE IGLESIAS FT. MARCO ANTONIO SOLÍS, “EL PERDEDOR”

8th February, 2014

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My farewell to Marco Antonio Solís back in 2007 (chart time) and 2019 (blog time) was premature: I'd neglected to look up features. And he's appeared as a songwriter twice since then anyway. But here he is purely a singer, playing the same role that Juan Luis Guerra did on "Cuando Me Enamoro" -- the elder pop statesman lending Enrique Iglesias a patina of grizzled accomplishment and emotional authenticity, outsinging him effortlesly even though he's doing his best not to upstage the marquee star: but Iglesias' overreliance on vocal fry for emotional resonance makes this performance a particularly unattractive one.

The song was written by Iglesias (eight years earlier than it was recorded, he claims) with an additional composition credit to Descember Bueno, a Cuban jazz fusion artist whose work with Yerba Buena was popular among mid-2000s "world music" connoisseurs. But there's no Cuba, jazz or fusion audible here: it's an old-fashioned rock ballad of a kind that Bon Jovi might have sung, and although Iglesias claimed to have written it with the hope of getting Solís to sing it with him, there's nothing particularly Solisian about it either, unless a slow pace, romantic focus, and self-pitying lyrics can be claimed as his exclusive property.

The one concession to the early 2010s is the fact that there was a bachata version released as well, which at least adds some rhythmic liveliness, but is otherwise the same song. Presumably that added market (as well as the success of the telenovela that used it as a theme) helped it go the distance for a single week in February 2014, the first new #1 after four months of the previous four (Marc Anthony, Prince Royce, Romeo Santos, and Enrique Iglesias ft. Santos) playing keep away back and forth with one another.

But there are only two more #1s left in 2014. Let's see if they get any more interesting.

Airplay Watch:

• Daddy Yankee, "La Nueva y la Ex"
• The first proper reggaetón song to appear here since Chino y Nacho back in 2010, a big, confident blare of a song about a guy trying to move on with his new, true love while his crazy ex tries to sabotage them online. It's funny, it's sexy, it's mean, it's stupid: it's great pop.

ALEJANDRO SAENZ, “NO ME COMPARES”

8th September, 2012

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Including this song, there are four Hot Latin #1s left until Billboard changes its source for chart calculation from radio airplay to streaming data. This will have a flattening effect on the top of the chart, with a decade to come of months-long reigns of whatever song with the "Latin" medatata tag is most popular at parties and in clubs, occasionally interrupted for a week at a time by some viral meme or another. My entries for the entirety of 2012 have been functioning as a kind of valedictory for what the chart used to be: diverse, disunified, serving widely different audiences and admitting women at its upper reaches far more frequently than  it ever will once streaming rules. But these last four songs before I start engaging almost exclusively with thumping male bravado have been looming almost as ominously as the Return of Reggaetón has, and it's because they too are thumping male bravado, just in a different mode than is suited for clubs.

I've enjoyed, or at worst been pleasantly surprised by, Alejandro Sanz' previous entries here, both as a duet partner for Shakira and on his own, but this impassioned ballad betrays little of his literate musical eclecticism, drawing musically from early-2000s electro-acoustic adult contmporary and lyrically from the exhausted tradition of men bellowing after a lost love. True, the lyrics are far more poetic, with evocative and even provocative imagery in a deeply Spanish tradition, than is typical in pop, but they remain a mere collection of phrases tracking a conventional sentiment and have no surprises to give. Sanz is in fine voice, using his flamenco-descended "gitano" rasp to undeniable effect, but the one-note moodiness of the song means that his performance is also unsurprising, just builds along with the music's conventional swell from mopey intro to self-justifying chorus.

Still, I will miss hearing from Spain on this travelogue. I have mostly merely tolerated the contributions of the Iberian peninsula as compared to the hungrier, more vibrant Latin American scenes, but just as the Anglophone U.S. charts have frequently been at their most interesting when there was a lot of cross-pollination from the UK (the mid-60s, the early 80s), European insularity and self-regard can apply a pseudo-sophistication to the fundamentally Western-hemispherical forms whose absence will be felt once the top of the chart gets turned over almost entirely to tropical bangers.

PRINCE ROYCE, “LAS COSAS PEQUEÑAS”

17th March, 2012

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I've catalogued a number of firsts in the thirteen years (!) I've been writing this blog, but here's another: the first time I (along with everyone else who blurbed it at the Singles Jukebox) am quoted in the "Critical Reception" section of the song's Wikipedia page. My blurb, in its totality, and with links added for context, reads:

It’s deeply unfortunate that this boring lullaby is the Jukebox’s introduction to Royce. Not that he’s ever really been a cause for pulse-rate-raising (unless his duet with Daddy Yankee counts), but his early singles had more sparkle and snap to them — he even made “Stand by Me” interesting, and in the twenty-first century! — and with the exception of the obligatory steel-guitar solo (it is bachata, after all) this one just kind of sits there. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except the “na na na na na na” hook sounds almost exactly like Mike Birbiglia’s Kenny G impression.

Which at this distance feels a little like kicking a puppy. Is "Las Cosas Pequeñas" twee sentimental gloop? It absolutely is. But twee sentimental gloop has its place in the pop ecosystem, and in 2023 I'm kind of entranced by how all-in the production goes in on its tremulous bathos: celeste twinkles, vibrating string sections, dramatic piano ripples. The steel-stringed guitar solo and Royce's sense of rhythm are about all that make it bachata: otherwise it's a straight down the middle r&b song that could have been produced ten, twenty, or thirty years earlier.

Which may feel like a betrayal of bachata authenticity, but Royce was never marketed as authentic (as noted, his first single was a Spanglish cover of the Ben E. King standard), and if teen-idol pop isn't allowed to be bathetic it's fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It's still a little painfully generic, but I don't have it in me to despise it anymore. Maybe I'm just in a mellow mood, happy to luxuriate in another one-week wonder before the chart takes on streaming and everything flattens out much more. "Las Cosas Pequeñas" is itself a cosa pequeña (little thing), and contra the message of the song, it's not worth getting too worked up about.

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.

WISIN Y YANDEL FT. ENRIQUE IGLESIAS, “GRACIAS A TÍ”

19th December, 2009

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A year ago, Wisin y Yandel had appeared on a remix of an Enrique Iglesias song, giving it a sales and radio boost by endowing a mopey ballad with some stiff-upper-lip machismo. Now the favor is returned, as Enrique guests on a remix of a Wisin y Yandel ballad, enlivening their emotionally constipated shout-out to female fans (coded as a sentimental love song) with his patented straining tenderness.

The reggaetón interregnum sounds odder and odder in hindsight: the soft-rock plod of the drums here, in a song handled by reggaetón superproducers Nesty and El Nasi, feels even more like a concession to the broader pop market than W&Y's previous three appearances here (the last time we heard them over the dembow riddim was on "Sexy Movimiento," in January 2008). It doesn't slow them down any; their machine-tooled voices are still propulsive and authoritative as ever. Charmingly, Wisin even attempts to croon for a bit before returning to his comfort zone of ratatat toasting.

The video, shot in concert in Buenos Aires (where Iglesias recorded his remix and surprised the audience by appearing on stage with the boys to perform it), is even more an homage to the fans who have consistently been propelling Wisin y Yandel to the top of the charts. But for sympathetic non-fans, the song is a lesser rewrite of "Lloro Por Tí," and showcases none of the men involved at their best. 

LOS TEMERARIOS, “SI TÚ TE VAS”

19th July, 2008

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I haven't kept faithful track of the beats per minute of every song on this travelogue, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't the slowest one we've had in a very long time. And while I'm generally an uptempo maniac, paradoxically, low bpms past a certain point stop being dull and start being fascinating again: there's a tension and drama to the pulse when you're forced to wait for it.

Which is to say that this, the swan song of Los Temerarios at the #1 spot (barring unexpected comebacks), is maybe the most arresting of the four songs we've heard from them. Twice we heard them covering Vicente Fernández, and twice singing their own songs, and while they're slightly better at their own work (or maybe they're just not as great as Vicente Fernández at recording Vicente Fernández songs), here they drop the pretense of being even remotely a regional band. the orchestra-plus-guitar production is thoroughly universal, and thoroughly anodyne: so all the focus is on Gustavo Ángel Alba's voice. It's a fine voice, better than Marco Antonio Solís' but not as good as Luis Miguel's.

They had stopped pretending to be a band by this point too; as the A and G in their logo on the album cover indicate, Los Temerarios were Adolfo and Gustavo. The song itself, written by Adolfo Ángel Alba, is rather lame, a sparse introduction followed by three choruses whining about how the singer's world would come crashing down if his lover were to leave: the glacial pace, the trumpet solo, and the gear-grinding key change before the final chorus, invest it with what little structural drama it has. The expensive-looking video, with its elegant desaturation and highly physical models, is a signpost as to the audience Los Temerarios were pitching themselves to now: the music-from-nowhere internationalism of glossy bourgeois pop, among the Eros Ramazzottis, Céline Dions, and (remember, it's 2008) Leona Lewises of the world.

It was only #1 for a week before Flex's bouncier, scrappier, and younger romanticism took back over. Romántica music isn't dead, but it will take different forms in the future.

ENRIQUE IGLESIAS, “DÓNDE ESTÁN CORAZÓN”

1st March, 2008

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It's appropriate that this song was the new radio single from the greatest-hits comp 95/08 Exitos, since it calls back to Iglesias' earliest 1995 hits in rock instrumentation and moody angst, but he's grown so much as a singer and performer since then -- by which I mean that he's figured out how to make his vocal limitations work for rather than against the emotion of the track -- that it could only have been made in 2008.

He takes the whole song in a low-energy croon, never attempting to reach for notes that he will strain to hit. (Again, he co-wrote it, which seems to help.) There's a laziness (in formal terms) to the singing which from a decade's distance seems to predict the rise of mumble rap and deadpan darlings like Billie Eilish. And while most of Iglesias' material from here on out will be much higher energy, he will never again attempt to be as passionate as he did in the 90s.

"Dónde Están Corazón" is a melancholic song about a universal experience that Spanish calls "desamor," and can be translated "lack of love" or "heartbreak" but more frequently means "falling out of love," the converse of the more frequently celebrated "enamoración" (falling in love). The lyrics are vague as to details -- or generously universal -- but suffused with an appreciation of the closeness and mutual satisfaction that the singer once shared but is now gone forever. I couldn't help comparing it to Juanes' more cheerful song the week before: the lyrics are much less poetic and more straightforward, which is partly the difference between Juanes' vaguely aristocratic rock and Iglesias' more demotic pop.

Not that Enrique is anything but a child of privilege. At this point, he has stopped pretending to be anything else, and it suits him.

LUIS FONSI, “TU AMOR”

24th February, 2007

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Fonsi's fourth appearance here, and he's more invested in the legacy sounds of rock than ever, to a degree which seems inexplicable in today's post-urbano landscape.

 "Tu Amor" is one of those most unlikely of hits -- a new track on a greatest-hits compilation (Éxitos 98:06, in which the use of a colon rather than a dash turns the title from a mere descriptor into a Biblical pun) -- the occasional success rate of which continues to inspire the practice. It's a relatively undistinguished midtempo ballad, chugging along with no variation in tempo, just dynamics, while Fonsi's romántica-oriented voice, unsuited to the more idiosyncratic emotional signifiers of rock, wails glibly over top.

It was only #1 for a week in the interregnum between radio-only and streaming-plus calculations of the chart, which presumably means it was popular in digital downloads (this was two weeks after the release of the deluxe edition of the compilation). Fonsi was at his first commercial peak in the late 2000s, still young enough to be a heartthrob, but mature enough that, having found his voice, he could produce great music and not just generic imitations of it. If this leans more toward generic than great, it's firmly in line with contemporary trends: in the mid-to-late 2000s blustery ballads were all the rage on international versions of Pop Idol and X Factor, and it would be a couple more years before dance music became the center of international pop again. (And Fonsi will be there too. Stay tuned.)

RICKY MARTIN FT. LA MARI & TOMMY TORRES, “TU RECUERDO”

23rd December, 2006

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We close out the raucous, pulsating, hotly contested 2006 (a.k.a. the Year Reggaetón Broke) with an older, perhaps more calcified, Puerto Rican sound.

The inevitable music video has four people on stools before the audience. Only the primary singer, a former boy band member and global hitmaker, is pushed a little forward, which makes him look taller than the rest. To his right on guitar and harmonies is the song's writer and producer, who got his start writing and producing for a later iteration of the singer's old boy band. On his right, eventually making the song a duet, a Spanish singer who pushed flamenco vibes into chillout worldbeat music to comparatively limited success, whose close-cropped haircut is a visible reminder of the cancer she had spent the previous year in treatment for. And on the far side of the line, perhaps the world's foremost traditional cuarto player, picking out delicate emotional lines on the traditional Puerto Rican instrument.

The credit line should really read "Ricky Martin ft. La Mari (of Chambao), Tommy Torres, and Christian Nieves," but of course the instrumentalist gets left off: pop has its caste system. Still, of the four spotlit players (there's a full orchestra behind them, because this is a ballad), Torres is the one whose performance is most anonymous: his sweet pop-derived melodies do little but set up volleys for Martin, Mari, and Nieves to spike. La Mari earns applause in the middle of the song for injecting a little cante gitano into her verse, which is the first time I teared up while listening to it; the second was during the dispassionate fluidity of Nieves' cuatro solo. After which Martin gently improvising as though over a salsa montuno rides out the song on a high note.

It's a gorgeous performance, and if the song itself doesn't quite live up to it, that may be because it's a stitched-together pop recreation of traditional jíbaro music rather than a song emerging naturally from that tradition. Not that a traditional jíbaro would ever float within a million miles of #1; but this, with the r&b-inflected rhythms in Martin's voice, the flamenco hints in La Mari's voice, and the pura romántica in Torres, is even more gloriously miscegenated than most pop.

It's the kind of thing that used to be able to go to #1 in the closing weeks of the year, traditionally slow for music buying or radio adds, giving older or less dominant audiences a time of year to hear themselves represented at #1. There's nothing necessarily festive about it (it's a song about still feeling conflicted about an old flame), but in the year of reggaetón it still feels like sentimental throwback to a classicist never-never land, and so it's holiday music regardless.

ALEJANDRO SANZ, “A LA PRIMERA PERSONA”

25th November, 2006

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When we first ran across Sr. Sanz, as the male foil to Shakira in "La Tortura", I was pretty dismissive of his contribution, approving of his weaselly performance of masculinity without attributing much of the song's punch or heft to him, a European interloper on decidedly American (in the hemispherical sense) turf. But this song has me reconsidering my stance.

Alejandro Sanz was born in Madrid to Andalusian parents, and his earliest musical efforts were entries in a postmodern flamenco revival that was briefly fashionable in late-80s Spain. Even when he made the shift into more commercial adult-contemporary ballad material in the early 90s, his phrasing retained echoes of the throaty "gitano" singing style of flamenco tradition. His 1997 worldbeat album Más remains the all-time best-selling record in Spain, and he responded to that ongoing success by becoming a demonstratively "thoughtful" pop star in the mode of a Sting or a Bono, recording increasingly political material and lecturing at Harvard on Hispanic culture.

His global exposure following "La Tortura" meant that his 2006 album was practically guaranteed to be a hit, which makes this one of the strangest #1s we've ever had, as emotionally florid, hyperverbal and structurally anti-pop as some of Juan Gabriel's most lavish excesses. The flowing, pattery verses recall Bob Dylan at his most motormouthed, though Sanz' soulful, gritted-teeth delivery is in both a flamenco and a rock tradition. The drums beat martially, or funereally, and the trumpet which bursts through the moody, atmospheric instrumentation like a grateful sunbeam could equally be a clarion charge or a variation on "Taps."

Because the point of all Sanz' motormouthed excoriation is the old story: love lost, ego bruised, a man on the hunt for his next source of succor. But there's no confidence that he will get it: the chords perversely refuse to resolve, no chorus ever explodes into certainty, there is only another cycle through the same obsessive refrain. It's a strange art-rock curiosity sitting atop the Hot Latin chart for a week, presumably the beneficiary of early digital download metrics sandwiched in between far more conventional radio pop.

DON OMAR, “ANGELITO”

22nd July, 2006

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No sooner has reggaetón been grudgingly accepted within the exclusive club of the Hot Latin #1s than it turns maudlin and literary. Don Omar was Daddy Yankee's principal challenger to the title of supremacy within reggaetón's first explosion in popularity; his 2006 album King of Kings was the first reggaetón album to debut at #1 on the Latin Albums chart, but "Angelito" was only at the top for a week compared to "Rompe"'s three-month reign. Don Omar's true imperial era is yet to come; in the meantime, there's this.

I don't know enough about the history of reggaetón to say for certain whether this was notable as being an early ballad in the style, but it's certainly true that it was the first balladic reggaetón to achieve such widespread success, crossing over to listeners who weren't invested in reggaetón but knew a good weepie when they heard it. In that way it's comparable to something like 2Pac's "Dear Mama," a moment of vulnerability all the more notable for the self-aggrandizing celebrations of violence and excess that surround it.

But Omar's not giving away anything about himself: the voice in which he speaks for most of the song is that of AIDS, the death sentence of a woman who loved a stranger incautiously one night and whose soul is the "angelito, vuela" (little angel, fly away) of the chorus. Pop-song PSAs have rarely been more lavish: the funereal opening and sawing strings before the the dembow riddim finally kicks in on the second chorus are time-tested signifiers of Gravitas, while the spoken-word outro, which in a club-aimed track would be reserved for the shoutouts to producer and label (DJ Eliel does get namechecked in the intro) is a lapel-shaking DO YOU SEE giving the song an Aesopian moral: "Vive la vida minuto a minuto y encontrarás en cada uno de ellos un motivo por el cual conducirte en la forma correcta. Te lo aseguro." (Live your life from moment to moment and you will find in each of them a reason to conduct yourself in the proper manner. I promise.)

But while it can be inferred that Don Omar is advocating safe sex, he's cagey enough to allow the moralist-friendly interpretation that he's advocating abstinence. The background to all of this was government repression and censorship, as the rich white upperclass of Puerto Rico used morality laws to raid nightclubs and record stores where reggaetón, born of the largely Black underclass in San Juan, was being disseminated (many thanks to Eduardo Cepeda's hugely informative column on the history of reggaetón), and Omar, an international star working with a major budget (the video, shot on location in Rome, was not cheap) and already dealing with charges of drug and arms possession, was smart enough to walk the line that would keep his work free from the censor's marker.

Ultimately I find "Angelito" more interesting than gripping: the discourse on safe sex has moved so far past its banal sentimentalities that it's more of a period piece than many of its contemporaries. But Eliel's widescreen production is still pretty great, even in the HD era.

ANAÍS, “LO QUE SON LAS COSAS”

15th April, 2006

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Any examination of pop in the 2000s is going to have to encounter singing-competition reality shows sooner or later, and I can only be grateful that this song, more than halfway into the decade, is the first time a song by the winner of a singing competition has appeared here.

The Puerto Rican show Objetivo Fama was on its second season: a combination of Big Brother and X-Factor, it featured hopeful pop stars rooming together in a house/studio while competing to win the favor of judges and the viewing public via performances. The first season had only been open to Puerto Ricans, but the second loosened those rules, and Anaís Martínez, from the Dominican Republic, went all the way. Her prize was a recording contract with Univision, and her debut single was a cover of Puerto Rican star Ednita Nazario's 1991 adult-contemporary classic "Lo Que Son Las Cosas" (the way things are, written by her ex-husband, Argentine pop star Luis Ángel Márquez), which only missed appearing here then thanks to Los Bukis.

Of course I like Ednita's version better than Anaís' -- it's straight-down-the-line early 90s adult contemporary in exactly the vein I'm nostalgic for because that was the first period in which I listened to pop music, where the later cover is overproduced and oversung. It's not bad particularly, but it's missing the context of the original: Nazario had been an Olivia Newton John-esque pop starlet since the late 70s, and was entering middle age singing her husband's song expressing fatalistic regret about relationships ending while in the midst of a very public divorce from him. Anaís' cover performs the emotions with convincing correctness, but she's too young and too obviously well-funded (the kitchen sink is thrown at this very reality-show holleralong) for any but the most generalized emotions to come through.

LUIS FONSI, “NADA ES PARA SIEMPRE”

27th August, 2005

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Three stone-cold classics in a row is not normal for a run of #1s on any pop chart in any year; once we set aside simple nostalgia, the law of averages would dictate that the #1 spot bear its share of flashes in the pan, middling work buoyed by affection for prior greatness, and other detritus. But sometimes the stars align, and Juanes, Shakira and now Luis Fonsi have ushered in a new era -- like Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, and Marc Anthony did in 1999, but less invested in English-language crossover and more invested in particularly Latin sounds.

Which, granted that Juanes's guasca rock and Shakira's pop reggaetón were "particularly Latin," what's so very Latin about Luis Fonsi's shuffly ballad, sounding like every rootsy Bush-era crooner from Jack Johnson to Jason Mraz? Two things: the enveloping string arrangement, which has been a regular feature of this travelogue since Luis Miguel's symphonic boleros of the 90s, and the solomonic lyrics, which manage to be both very philosophical and very emotional in the best Spanish tradition.

Because it's impossible, once you know the context of the song, to hear it as anything but a gorgeous, broken-hearted love song about facing your lover's mortality. It was written by Afro-Cuban trovero Amaury Gutiérrez (himself a bit of an inspiration for folks like Johnson and Mraz), but Fonsi recorded it in the context of his wife Adamari López's diagnosis with breast cancer.

She survived, and is currently a Telemundo host (they divorced in 2010), but the song remains as beautiful and endlessly adaptable to the listener's own circumstance as ever. The title is plainspoken: Nothing is forever. But it's the chorus that resonates: "Quiero amarte hoy/Quiero amarte hoy/Por si no hay mañana" (I want to love you today/I want to love you today/In case there's no tomorrow). The post-2008 trend of cataclysmic pop in the English-speaking world is anticipated here, but Fonsi's scope is smaller and more intimate than the widescreen apocalypses invoked by the likes of Ke$ha; when one person is your whole world, you don't need an apocalypse for the world to end.

INTOCABLE, “AIRE”

5th March, 2005

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Two Mexican regional songs in a row in the #1 spot might suggest that 2005 is seeing something of a return to traditionalism; but although certainly there was and is overlap between the Conjunto Primavera's fanbase and Intocable's, they're also very, very different bands with different approaches to their material.

Part of that is just the difference between conjunto chihuahuense and a tejano ballad band; although they both feature prominent accordion, square rhythms, and romantic vocals, Primavera's Tony Melendez is a squarely traditional singer in an almost bel canto tradition, perfect at making itself heard in unamplified plazas, while Intocable's Ricardo Muñoz is, well, Texan: his vocal technique is derived from African-American soul and the longstanding intimacy of US pop recording.

And that's the real difference: between Mexican regional music and tejano, which is marketed as Mexican regional music (and is quite popular in many regions of Mexico), but is also part of the larger North American pop universe. Intocable (whose name means Untouchable; the Clint Eastwood movie was five years old when they first started using the name) is as much a U.S. band as a Latin one; they're just so wildly popular in the Latin market that they don't need recognition from the Anglophone portions of the U.S.

That "Aire" is our first encounter with them is due to chance more than to their popularity; they've been million-sellers since the late 90s, and it's not even necessarily one of their most popular songs. But it is a great song: straightforward and beautiful, with enough rhythmic shifting to remain interesting (the underwater half-time middle eight is a remarkable effect in a #1 song) and such a lovely, vulnerable central performance from Muñoz that even the rather hackneyed lyrics of the chorus ("tú eres aire que respiro," you are the air I breathe) sound invested with emotion and, thereby, truth.

Intocable's ability to invest traditional tejano instrumentation and structure with North American pop gloss and soul emotionalism have made them so wildly popular for forty years that it's a shame this is the only time we'll meet them on this travelogue, at least as of this writing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they somehow gamed the streaming era too, though.

CONJUNTO PRIMAVERA, “HOY COMO AYER”

25th February, 2005

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From the opening notes, it's clear that Juan Dominguez and his men have no interest in playing the pop game of keeping up with trends and changing with the times: they're keeping on keeping on, sounding almost exactly like they would have in 1988, with perhaps fuller production and a little more grain in Tony Melendez's voice, but otherwise unchanged.

The previous time we heard them, Félix Contreras was playing an accordion, and this time he's playing a Casio keyboard, which means that "Hoy Como Ayer" (today like yesterday) isn't technically conjunto chihuahuense, but a regional ballad. It's a very good regional ballad, possibly the best we've heard since the 1990s, but it's a rapidly-vanishing tradition, at least at the #1 spot.

The song's melody is as sturdy and repetitive as a hymn's, and there's a churchy stateliness to the entire proceedings, punctuated only by Dominguez' sensual saxophone solos. Whether Conjunto Primavera knew they had a hit and invested it with all the dramatic tension at their disposal or whether the high drama of the production was what made it a hit is an open question; either way, it's a late classic in a style that dominated the early and mid 1990s in this travelogue, the likes of which it's doubtful we'll run across again.

OBIE BERMÚDEZ, “TODO EL AÑO”

8th January, 2005

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The first new number one of 2005 is also (probably) the last time we'll be seeing Obie Bermúdez on this travelogue. It's also his best song, record, and performance of the three we've heard: a year on from his breakthrough, his voice is huskier and less whiney, which exactly suits the low-key, largely acoustic mood of the song. It's the kind of song which an Anglophone contemporary like Gavin DeGraw might have blanketed malls with, but because Latin pop is so musically diverse (and because Sr. Bermúdez as a pinup had only very limited appeal) it would be quickly left behind in the rush to elevate more dazzling songs and sexier stars.

But while it's here, it's a very good rock ballad with slow, barely discernible island rhythms. The almost inaudible maraca insisting on a dotted triplet on the second verse while the drums plod in straight rock time is a vague gesture toward Cuban bolero, or even Puerto Rican plena. It's soon overwhelmed by the galumphing rock sheen, of course, but its memory and Obie's faithfulness to a soulfully syncopated rhythm makes the song engaging where a smoother, more straightforward singer would make it soporific.

2005 is an unusual year in the middle of the 2000s, a sort of preview of what the chart will be like under streaming: so dominated by a few massive hits that there will only be nine #1s all year, the record low since 1991's eight. That record will be broken in a decade's time, but the modern period of Latin Pop really starts this year. Stay tuned.

ALEJANDRO FERNÁNDEZ, “ME DEDIQUÉ A PERDERTE”

23rd October, 2004

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Throughout the last decade of this travelogue, whenever Alejandro Fernández has shown up it's been cause for celebration. One of the most tasteful and careful musicians of his generation of Spanish-language pop stars, he's been a better singer than Enrique Iglesias, a more thoughtful selector of material than Ricky Martin, and less interested in chasing trends than Marc Anthony.

And he's paid the relative penalty for it; fewer #1s, of shorter duration, than his peers, and no crossover hits. He hasn't sung in English, remaining a faithfully Mexican star, and he has mostly stayed out of the Anglophone media circus: the Hispanophone media circus is giddy enough on its own.

But his 2004 album A Corazón Abierto (with open heart) signals a change. The classy suits and charro cosplay of his twenties are gone: and the on the cover of the single for "Me Dediqué a Perderte" (I dedicated myself to losing you) he's in a t-shirt and hippie wristbands, like he's trying to be one of those younger, more rock-oriented stars, a Luis Fonsi or a Juanes.

The song is similarly contemporary: although there's still a bolero inflection to the percussion, it's drowned out by the studio drum kit playing straightforward ballad rock. The song was written by Leonel García of Sin Bandera, and that band's generic music-from-nowhere sound has overwhelmed Fernández' classy traditionalism. But then, classy contemporalism gets you hits. For a season.

Fernández the singer is still a marvel: nuanced and emotive, he savors every syllable in his burnished throat like the singer Enrique Iglesias wishes he was. But the song just sits there instead of taking flight: the string arrangements which have so often been a highlight of his appearances here just flutter uselessly instead of providing dramatic contrast.

It's the sound of a singer aging into a comfortable stasis. From here on out, it's increasingly unlikely that Alejandro Fernández will challenge himself or his audience; like Luis Miguel, his place as a permanent fixture of Mexican culture is secure, and he can coast. The kids are coming up from behind.

MARC ANTHONY, “AHORA QUIÉN”

19th June, 2004

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The song that replaced Jennifer Peña's "Vivo y Muero en Tu Piel" (and indeed danced a duet with it, as the two songs passed the #1 spot back and forth for eight weeks in the summer of 2004) is a perfect illustrative example of the way the Latin pop industry, and even the Latin pop listenership, treat men and women unequally. "Piel," you may remember, was released in both a pop and a cumbia version, with a glossy video for both (more or less the same video, but her lip-syncing is different to go with the different styles) -- and "Ahora Quién" was released in both a pop and a salsa version, with the same glossy video for both; only slightly more frantic editing in the salsa version distinguished them.

But where for Peña (at least going by current YouTube counts, which is the only data I have) the pop ballad version was more popular by an order of magnitude, Marc Anthony enjoys the privilege of having the regional, tropical, "ethnic" version be the more popular one, again by an order of magnitude. For both of them, the swelling, bombastic pop renditions of the songs are full of florid emotion and a certain amount of stately narcissism; the ones with the Caribbean rhythms and punchy arrangements make the same emotional point, but also invite the listener to participate in a living tradition of dance and movement rather than just wallowing in lugubrious emotional identification.

It's indisputably true that throughout the history of pop music women have been used as a point of lugubrious emotional identification more frequently than men, who are more often awarded the guardianship of ethnic traditions and the authority of inscribing their personality (rather than just their emotional reactions) onto whatever they perform. This is sexism at its most basic and primal, and few listeners in even the most progressive circles are wholly free from its logic (I certainly would not claim to be). But it's also true that Marc Anthony was, and is, just a bigger star -- both his videos are several orders of magnitude more popular than Peña's -- and his career both preceded hers and has continued since her withdrawal from the market. There's no one-to-one correspondence here.

With its neurotic, motormouthed expression of jealousy, "Ahora Quién" is a pretty good song qua song -- songwriter and producer Estéfano plays the role here that Rudy Pérez did for Jennifer Peña -- but it's neither Marc Anthony at his best nor entirely free from awkwardness: it's pretty obvious that it was composed as a power ballad and had to be retrofitted into a tropical dance number. And even in the salsa version, the first verse still contains a fragment of the pop ballad; but once the montuno gets the upper hand, the funky rhythm never leaves it.

It's the second salsa #1 of 2004, which given how little salsa has appeared here since 2000 might mean the music was experiencing a bit of a renaissance -- but it's only too obvious how unrepresentative the #1 spot is of the entirety of musical activity. It's the mid-oughts already; other island rhythms are coming up from behind.

JENNIFER PEÑA, “VIVO Y MUERO EN TU PIEL”

29th May, 2004

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If Jennifer Peña's career proceeded in emulation of Selena's, this might be the point where Selena's ended: with a frosty, devotional ballad. But Jennifer never crossed over to the English language, preferring to remain resolutely, and indeed polyphonically, Latin -- the regionally-aimed cumbia version of the song also had a video, in which her hips move with much greater freedom than they do in the canonical ballad version -- and this is her last appearance in our travelogue. She would only issue one more studio album, and then marriage (to Obie Bermúdez?!), her recording contract going into legal limbo as a result of label mergers, and finally a turn to Christian music would sideline her pop career for good.

The parent album, Seducción, also featured a salsa version of this song among its bonus tracks, because although the recording industry was undergoing the precipitous slide from its millennial peak, diversification was still a good bet. But it was the pop ballad version that was the hit, judging by its view count (although the cumbia version sounds much more lively and interesting at a remove of fourteen years), and Rudy Pérez's mooning lyrics about the overwhelming, totalizing way that the early stages of a crush affects the enamored one only really make sense in a ballad form: in the cumbia, such lugubriousness ring hollow among so much boot-scooting good cheer.

"Vivo y Muero en tu Piel" means "I live and die in your skin," a striking image that, in the context of the song, is really just an elaboration of the "whither thou goest, I will go" of Ruth 1:16. And I'm reminded again of how much more sensual, how much more willing to consider physical bodies and mention skin and flesh, Latin pop is than Anglo pop. The fundamental Gnosticism of American religion, its pretense that love can be purely an intellectual-emotional exercise without corresponding physicality, casts long shadows.

GLORIA ESTEFAN, “TU FOTOGRAFÍA”

8th May, 2004

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In the spring of 2004, Gloria Estefan was 46: the perfect age, you might say, for a stock-taking ballad about the emotional gap left by elders who had passed on, leaving nothing behind but old black-and-white photographs. On the cover of the single, she clutches a photo of her in-laws, Emilio's parents, taken on their wedding day in Havana in the 1940s.

The fact that this obviously very personal, even intimate song still went to #1 perhaps owes less to the undeniable universality of its themes (everyone but the very young has experienced loss and grown sentimental over an old picture) than Gloria Estefan's stature as an icon of Latin pop twenty years in to her hitmaking career. 2003's Unwrapped spawned four singles, but the third, "Te Amaré," was only issued in Spain, where it was a substantial hit, and the second, "I Wish You," was only pushed to English-language radio, where it was a modest adult-contemporary hit; but the two Spanish-language singles released in the U.S. hit #1 on the Hot Latin chart as if duty-bound.

The song itself is perfectly lovely, also co-written by Peruvian songwriter Gian Carlo, with an intelligent, unpredictable chord structure and marvelous, emotionally literate work from drummer Manu Katché and percussionist Archie Peña. Gloria's performance is understated but resonant, reminding me not for the first time of the warmth and yearning in Amy Grant's 1980s records, which is a higher compliment than you may suspect.

It was only #1 for a week, but it only needed to be. In some ways it's the tail end of Gloria's imperial period: we will see her again, but not with the frequency we have since 1989. She's moving towards brand management rather than pop stardom, and as her and Emilo's portfolios diversify, the charts take a back seat. Never mind; the kids are always coming up from behind.