CHAYANNE, “SI NOS QUEDARA POCO TIEMPO”

12th May, 2007

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I think I've often been unfair to Chayanne here, as I often am to handsome young men who sing earnestly romantic songs without gesturing toward any particular regional musical tradition. International balladry, vaguely contemporary in production but wholly conventional in writing and composition, is probably my least favorite body of musical production: not because it's impossible for real emotion or exquisite performances to come out of it (if anything, quite the opposite), but because without obvious genre markers or any grounding in personal history I can't hear a way into it. The instinct I always have is: "This is between the singer and whoever, real or imaginary, he's singing to; it's got nothing to do with me."

This was my reaction here -- at least until the pre-chorus line "Y la melancolía / me ataca por la espalda sin piedad" (and melancholy / attacks me from behind, merciless) made me pause in my tracks. Wait, is this a song about depression?

Well, it's a song about loss, whether real or imagined; the chorus is delivered in a conditional tense, as the title (If We Had Little Time Left) should have made obvious, and the middle eight is more or less a thesis statement: "Nadie sabe en realidad que es lo que tiene / hasta que enfrenta el miedo de perderlo para siempre" (nobody really knows what they have / until they face the fear of losing it forever). Which in English sounds like the tag line to a Spielbergian apocalypse-made-personal or a Nicholas Sparks-style sentimental romance; but the glory of pop music is that it can compress such narratives into three-minute shots of emotion without having to drag us through three-act structures and lingering closeups.

The production supporting Chayanne's throaty rasp here is more muscular than usual: 90s-style post-alt rock production with crashing drums and chugging guitars. There's a certain kind of comfort to it for older or middle-class listeners, particularly in the age of reggaetón, but Chayanne so clearly belongs to an older generation that (as of this writing at least) this song will be his last appearance on this travelogue. It won't be for lack of effort; his late-2010s singles are collaborations with reggaetoneros old and young. But as a valedictory, "Si Nos Quedara Poco Tiempo" works very well.

CHAYANNE, “CUIDARTE EL ALMA”

31st January, 2004

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Before beginning this travelogue, I think I would have expected a lot of it to sound like this: heavily-produced international romantic balladry with sensitive Spanish-guitar runs, a caricature of Latinidad borrowed more from the soundtrack to Don Juan DeMarco than from the living music of some twenty-five different Latin nations. And the caricature is at least somewhat rooted in fact: the song was co-written by Chilean composer Cristian Zalles (who makes it sound like an aching telenovela theme) and Catalan singer-songwriter Marc Durandeau (who gives it a lavish romanticism). 

But it's a natural fit for Chayanne, who has aged into the perfect sensitive crooner with a bit of a rasp. (He was a much better singer than Bryan Adams to begin with.) The studio-orchestral production, with close-miked violins and guitar, is classicist in a way that doesn't feel airless the way so much of the classicist orchestral production of the era can. And the song's natural rhythm, a gentle sway rather than the flat-footed 4/4 or waltz time of so much Anglophone balladry, only adds to the yearning in Chayanne's voice as he builds through it.

It was #1 for three weeks in the winter of 2004, when the charts were historically more open to unexpected hits thanks to diminished sales. It represents the next stage in Chayanne's evolution; into a fully adult crooner. I probably have never given him his full due here the way I have his contemporary Luis Miguel: as of this writing, I'll only have one more chance to do so.

CHAYANNE, “UN SIGLO SIN TÍ”

6th September, 2003

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Mere weeks after I complimented Ricky Martin for not letting himself be defined by songwriter Franco De Vita's lugubrious chest-beating sentiment-rock, I find that Chayanne has done exactly that. It's probably the best song, and almost certainly the best performance, that we've heard from him throughout this travelogue, but although he's well-suited to De Vita's sturdy, gospel-based sweeping chords and lead-footed rhythms, the result is a kind of emotionally-extravagant narcissist-rock that you have to be keyed into the emotions of or it will fall dispiritingly flat.

"Un Siglo Sin Tí" means "a century without you," and the lyrics of the song are a description of the singer's desolation at having been left, his contrition at having behaved badly, and his insistence that he has changed. Put that way, it doesn't necessarily sound very appealing (every abuser ever could sing along), but I've made the mistake before of believing that pop songs expressing sentiments that would be questionable in actual interpersonal relations are therefore worthless, and (especially) should not appeal to the female audience which does, in fact, enjoy them. Which is just an aesthetic extension on my part of Nice Guy syndrome. Nobody needs my thesis on why Chayanne's grand gesture at the end of the video is creepy.

Pop is, among much else, an idealized version of reality, a safe space where all emotions are allowed to play out without the repercussions that would attend them in life. Even in the real world closing out the possibility of actual contrition and actual forgiveness can be a mistake; but even if there are no good men in fact, let there be some in fiction.

CHAYANNE, “Y TÚ TE VAS”

15th June, 2002

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The last time Chayanne appeared in these pages, I complained that (at least as far as his #1s history goes) he lacked a real identity beyond "smoldering jawline," his thin voice and limited expressiveness held hostage to his choice of material, and his production rarely keeping up with the times. As if in answer to my complaints, his new #1 begins with a twitchy electronic rhythm which sounds exactly like 2002.

Unfortunately, it's then overlaid with a pillowy bed of bombastic ballad signifiers, less of its time than of the generic "anywhen" of adult contemporary, and all that's left is emoting.

Surprisingly, the emoting works. That's because the song itself is a good one, architecturally well-constructed, and Chayanne's overdriven performance matches the heightened emotions that the chordal structure, the pacing, and the production dynamics evoke. For this, we can thank the song's writer, an almost forgotten name which we only met once, in 1991: earnest Venezuelan singer-songwriter Franco de Vita. I sneered rather heavily at him then, in terms that I now think are not entirely warranted, but his emulation of pop craftsmen like Billy Joel pays off here: "Y Tú Te Vas" (and you leave) is a strong song, its sound structure able to overcome a self-pitying lyric. When Chayanne allows a little pseudo-soulful grit into his voice on the chorus, it's the most effective singing I've ever heard from him.

The video is exactly as lavish and generic as the song: but I like it because its sympathies are never entirely with Chayanne, who smolders ineffectively; the woman leaves anyway, and all his self-pity is for naught.

CHAYANNE, “YO TE AMO”

2nd December, 2000

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Chayanne has mostly been an unremarkable, if consistent, presence in these pages: this is his fifth appearance since 1989, and there's not really been any narrative throughline to the songs with which he has bobbed to the surface. Blandly glamorous, suavely sentimental, with a thin, high voice which rarely changes even as the production drifts from moment to moment. The title of this new #1 is the kind of thing which needs to be a hell of a song to live up to its unadorned directness: how many really great songs called "I Love You" can there be?

This isn't one of them. It's fine: the lyric even acknowledges how hard it is to make "yo te amo" sound new, and the rhythmic descant on the chorus is a nice touch. The spacy 70s synthesizer which warbles up and down the track is the most interesting thing about the production, once more handled by Colombian mastermind Estéfano. The shuffling gospel rhythm already sounds dated; and while a full choir never comes in, there's enough claustrophobic thickness to the production that it's unnecessary.

Estéfano's lyric is really good, actually, worth looking up and reading through, whether in the original or translation. It's a more or less ordinary love song, but in its details and structure it's the kind of pop-literary performance that deserves a better song, and a better singer.

CHAYANNE, "DEJARÍA TODO"

12th December, 1998

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It's been six years since Puerto Rican pop star Chayanne has bobbed to the surface on these top-of-the-chart waters; although he's been working steadily in the meantime and been relatively successful at it, this still marks something of a comeback for him. Written by Estéfano, a prolific songwriter and producer from Colombia whose previous success stories had  included Jon Secada's debut album and Gloria Estefan's Mi Tierra, "Dejaría Todo" continues Chayanne's success with midtempo ballads. This time, thanks to Marcello Azevedo's nylon-stringed guitar, it has what you might call a stereotypically Latin flavor, a vaguely bolero sway, though not so pronounced that the barreling power-ballad chorus gets tripped up in any kind of polyrhythmic syncopation.

It's a "she's leaving me, my world is ending" song — more or less literally — and if the emotional hyperbole of the lyrics doesn't quite match up with the bland, adult-contemporary longeurs of the production, that's nothing new. Chayanne's voice isn't powerful, but it's pretty and well-suited to the aching romanticisms he's called upon to emote. (Enrique Iglesias, for example, would make an unlistenable fist of what Chayanne relaxes into.) It goes on for too long, as the chorus repeats and repeats, but it remains listenable throughout, Estéfano's production magic keeping each instrumental injection just this side of stultifying. The choral effect on the last several iterations of the chorus is both gilding this particular lily and getting to be a bit tiresome on this travelogue — how many faux-gospel choruses does that make within the past year? — but I'm surprised to discover that I have some affection for Chayanne.

Which is good, because he'll be back.

CHAYANNE, “EL CENTRO DE MI CORAZÓN”

17th October, 1992

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We've heard dispatches from Chayanne twice before, but this is the first time in which, for my money, he sounds like the globe-straddling pop star his single name and my vague awareness of modern Latin Pop over the last few decades would suggest. (Meaning his Greatest Hits are always in the Latin section of the local Wal-Mart or wherever.) (And in case you were wondering, his name is pronounced Shy Ann, though the last syllable varies considerably depending on where the DJ is from.)

The production is sharp and dynamic, as glossy and spirited as a Foreigner power ballad from 1982 — which, lest you misunderstand me, is not a complaint. We are well into the 90s by now, as the crisp, live-sounding drums attest, and the use of electric guitar, as a sort of emphasizer to symphonic bombast, begins to see a way out of the rock/not-rock dichotomy which has sort of hung over my understanding of non-dance Latin Pop over the course of this exercise.

Chayanne himself is almost the least interesting thing about the song, his thin voice just another instrument to convey the build and crash of the melody, a delivery system for lyrics about how dizzying love is. Although if his voice carried more authority — if he was Luis Miguel, in other words — it might be more difficult to take the bit where he suggests that she's planned it all out, and he's only the passive recipient of her seductive embraces. Chayanne, however, sounds just weak-minded enough for it all to sound plausible, and not even necessarily a bad thing. Some guys need to be pulled into love.

CHAYANNE, “COMPLETAMENTE ENAMORADOS”

20th October, 1990

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If you were wondering where the faintly chugging guitar in the intro to "Peligroso Amor" went, don't worry: it went here. Sure, the first sound we hear is the delicate tinkling of plastic ballad keyboards, but this ends up being more like the sort of gently rhythmic ballad that was popular in the 80s; probably the most obvious example of the form is "Every Breath You Take," but I always think of it as the "Missing You" template. (Uh, by which I mean John Waite, not Puff Daddy.)

Chayanne's matured as a vocalist from his last time round; he's even taken on some Waitean cod-soulfulness; and, more importantly, learned to sing from somewhere besides his head. Last time, of course, he was lamenting a love who would not love him back; this time he's celebrating mutual love. The title translates as "Completely In Love," but since the adjectival phrase is plural, means more precisely "[two people] completely in love."

This also marks the smuggled return of Italy into our pop narrative; the song was originally written by a brace of Italians including the legendary Eros Ramazzotti, who is as much a Latin Pop star as an Italian one, and who we will only meet in such glancing ways throughout this travelogue (so far). And once that scrap of information falls into place, the production choice sounds perfectly reasonable: of course this is an Italian ballad converted into Spanish. How could it ever have sounded like anything else?

CHAYANNE, “FUISTE UN TROZO DE HIELO EN LA ESCARCHA”

4th November, 1989

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The second temperate ballad in a row to be interrupted by a flash of electric-guitar wizardry; is this a slow-rolling sea change, or merely something which had never before bobbed to the surface? But comparisons with the Luis Miguel song which preceded it are not likely to be very fruitful; after all, once you've noted the difference in the singing styles (Miguel: all-out passion, Chayanne: so sweet as to maybe be called simpering), the similarities in topic (both are anguished farewells to dangerously fickle women that use images of ice and treachery), and a general structural similarity (which either of them would share with ninety percent of ballads produced in the last quarter of the century), what's left to compare?

That's meant for humor. Unfortunately there is a sameness to much of the music we've been discussing over the past several months, a sameness which stands out all the more to ears that have not really been trained to pick out the nuances, and who hasn't followed the breathless press about each new estrella fabulosa. But Chayanne's going to be around a while; let's see what there is to know about him.

He's of the same generation of pop stars as Luis Miguel; when Miguel had his first #1, Chayanne was right behind him at #4. If his own summitting took a little longer, well, he had more irons in more fires. As un estrella de pop puertorriqueño, he also got jobs in the island's telenovela industry. We'll get to his crowning glory in that field -- in fact, one of the absurd crowning glories of all Latin pop culture -- in a few years' time, but for now, note that his dreamy swoon-worthiness is as much televisual as musical. Also, his birth name was Elmer.

I'd engage the song more, but the snark above pretty much nailed it. I'll just translate the title as per usual: "You Were A Piece Of Ice In The Frost." Which sets us up for a much more poetic lyric than the one we actually get, but pop has always been as much about hollow promises as about glory fulfilled; frequently more so.