MANÁ FT. SHAKIRA, “MI VERDAD”

28th Feb, 2015

Wiki | Video

A pair of Nineties veteran acts joining up for a laid-back swayalong feels like the kind of thing that the streaming-era chart had no room for anymore; and the fact that it only went to #1 for a week in February 2015, one of a series of one-week wonders in late winter sandwiched in between monumental chart runs, seems more a product of chance (or perhaps of Billboard tinkering with its chart calculus) than of true blanket popularity. (On the airplay chart, it managed a whole two weeks at #1.)

Not that I'm complaining! While I've been largely cool on Maná in these pages, I've consistently adored Shakira, and maybe predictably, I find that her sweet-and-sour voice is exactly the ingredient needed to pull Maná out of their latter-day  doldrums and sound vividly, achingly sincere, like a sharp, high clarinet cutting through thickets of droning strings.

The lyric is constructed on a dialectic of "mentiras" (lies) and "verdad" (truth) -- the verses list all the falsity and betrayal that exists in the world, from cheating lovers to lying politicians, while the chorus calls the eternal romantic "you" the singer's truth, a refuge from the painful deceptiveness at large in the rest of existence. Although in the video, Shakira caresses a visibly pregnant belly (she gave birth to her second child the month before the single's release), transforming the "you" from romantic to parental love. And in the comments on the video, that seems to be the favorite reading: many family relationships and losses are related there.

The bolero rhythm underlying the verses, and the foursquare rock rhythm of the choruses, have their own implications (the tricksy, scheming Afro-Latin tradition versus the open, honest, white-coded sound?), although Maná are a rock band and believe in rock dynamics above everything. But this is their farewell (as of this writing) to this travelogue, so I can't be sorry that they brought on my favorite Colombian ringer to leave a better taste in my mouth than they might have otherwise.

Airplay Watch:

• Maná ft. Shakira, "Mi Verdad"
• Discussed above.

JUANES, “LA SEÑAL”

5th May, 2012

Wiki | Video

The reign of "Ai Se Eu Te Pego" at the top of the chart in the spring and early summer of 2012 was interrupted for only a week by a familiar face in a new context.

The old 1990s MTV Unplugged series, which had run its course in the US by the turn of the millennium, was kept alive mostly in international markets, where live music still had some youth-culture cachet; Juanes' edition, recorded February 1st 2012 in Miami Beach, isn't even listed on the series' English-language Wikipedia entry. The resulting album was his third live album overall, and the catalog of hits he played that night was deep, and frequently documented here. But "La Señal" was new, and as a single it struck enough of a chord with the Spanish-language radio audience that it nudged past Michel Teló's bland come-ons with its own bland platitudes.

We've seen a lot of men with guitars ruminating on life over the years here, and Juanes is no Alejandro Sanz, Ricardo Arjona, or Juan Luis Guerra (he's closer to Maná's Fher or Luis Fonsi). "La Señal" (the sign or the signal, but it could also mean the omen, portent, or signpost) attempts to reach for Greater Meaning, but all it has to do it with is the stripped-down language of rock, and ultimately Juanes' rhythnic capabilities are greater than his poetic ones.

But those rhythmic capabilities shouldn't be counted out. "La Señal" is clearly the product of a post-Jason Mraz world, and the unusual arrangement (a violin takes a solo as though this were the Dave Matthews Band) makes the song more sprightly and energetic than the bathetic lyrics would suggest. It's still ultimately a confused, inarticulate song stringing together longstanding rock tropes (freedom, desire, love, the road) into a mishmash of wants and demands, but it sounds great while it lasts.

Apparently Juan Luis Guerra was the producer for the live set and album, which may be part of why it sounds so great; but I'm petty enough to wish he'd taken a pass at the lyrics, too.

SHAKIRA, “TÚ”

20th February, 1999

Wiki | Video

In accordance with convention, the Hot New Pop Star On the Scene's second number one is a ballad, dreamy and vulnerable where "Ciega, Sordomuda" was lively and whip-smart. The fingerprints of 90s transatlantic rock are all over it, from the smeared guitar lines that could code as either alt-country or neo-psychedelic (shades of Cowboy Junkies) to the string section that chugs from "November Rain" to "To the End." She's long since worked out how to perform ballads in her idiosyncratic vocal style, and if she's less assured than she will later become she'll rarely trust herself to be so naked again without receding behind studio trickery and pop history.

Lyrically it's a straight-down-the-middle love song (as the title, "You," might hint to those who know pop practice) with a sprinkling of Shakira's signature left-field analogies and metaphors on top. The first line is "te regalo mi cintura" (I give you [the gift of] my waist), which sounds just as odd in Spanish as it does in English,  but in a genre in which hearts, hands, eyes and lips are regularly proffered, why not other, equally sensual, body parts? The chorus, however, is all straightforward sentiment, in trusty list format. The object of the song ("túúúúú-júúú") is: her sun, the faith by which she lives, the strength of her voice (typical Shakira hyperbole: surely she'd keep that for herself!), the feet with which she walks, her desire to laugh, the goodbye she doesn't know how to say. She's as strong (if eccentric) a writer as she is a singer (on both counts), and here she produces the rare ballad that repays intellectual attention as much as emotional.

When people complain about Shakira's going blonde and chasing a global (i.e. Anglophone) audience (and there are — still! — some who do), it's because the star she was at this point in her career so precisely satisfied a desire in the Latin audience for a performer who was easily as magnetic, as prodigiously talented, and as wildly creative as any US or UK rock star, but who was entirely theirs. Beck and Radiohead don't record albums in Spanish; Spanish-speakers have to go to them in order to enjoy their fruits. Why shouldn't the world have to come to Shakira, instead of the other way round?

But although ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? was certainly in conversation with Beck and Radiohead, her sights were already set higher. When next we hear from her, her peers won't be white male rockers, but the young women — black, white, and Latin — who are, in early 1999, already deeply engaged in the process of transforming the face of pop music in the US. Some of them will make their own appearances on this travelogue; like Shakira, they go to their audience, and are comfortable wearing the clothes of many places.