SHAKIRA, “LOBA”

8th August, 2009

Wiki | Video

For eleven years, Shakira's #1 songs have served as a bellwether for Latin pop: rock auteurism in the late 90s, big-tent pop universalism in the early 2000s, collaborative reggaetón formalism in the mid-2000s. Now she once more has her eyes on the future, and if her rubbery disco doesn't exactly predict the trance-heavy sounds of the next few years, that's because it took Anglophone pop until "Get Lucky," "Blurred Lines" and "Happy" to catch up to it. But perhaps the most important relative of "She-Wolf"/"Loba" in the Anglosphere was "Call Me Maybe," another fizzy throwback pop song sung and written by a woman but produced by a pop-rock veteran, in this case Jim Hill of Apples in Stereo, who gives the song modern rock dynamics without neglecting the groove.

But the echoes in English are of less import to this blog than the song's effect on Latin pop, which was immediate and in some ways profound. Not that there was an explosion of disco necessarily, but that Shakira's formal eccentricity, as always, gave implicit permission to those who considered her a peer or a model to move in unexpected and unintuitive directions. Although her musical models are fairly obvious (Daft Punk and Kylie Minogue had had recent electro hits with similar patterns, not to mention the Chic sample that gives the song its transcendent moment), her lyrical embrace of a grown woman's sexuality, unable to be confined to a single marital bed, was as bold an intervention in the habitual language around feminine desire in Latin pop as there has ever been. To dip into unworthy gossip-rag territory, it's perhaps unsurprising that her unmarried but committed relationship with her Argentine lawyer-manager ended the following year, after ten years together.

On a personal level, this song was probably the clearest impetus for beginning this blog that I heard in 2009. I've talked before about what Shakira had meant to me earlier in the decade, but being startled by "Loba"'s beautiful, horny weirdness while driving in the purple twilight of a Phoenix evening (the southbound Camelback exit of SR 51, forever) was the kind of aesthetic experience that this blog, as shallow and intermittent as it has been over the years, was built to chase.

Shakira's commitment to following her own muse, and making her pop audience follow her, rather than chasing the most current sound, has never been stronger than it was in this moment, and the fact that that commitment will end, or at least diminish, in years to come is one of the greatest shames this blog will chart. But more about that when it happens. For now, the softest, demurest "a-wooo."

DJ NESTY FT. WISIN Y YANDEL, “ME ESTÁS TENTANDO”

21st March, 2009

Wiki | Video

Reggaetón's evolution out of underground dancehall versioning and hip-hop mixtapes in the 1990s has meant that even as it became the most dominant commercial force in the Latin world, its discographies remained untidy, sprawling across all kinds of release formats on a variety of label-sanctioned (or not) modes.

So this song, which is only found under Wisin y Yandel on today's streaming services (the video link above has it hosted on their official YouTube account), was initially released as the first single from DJ Nesty's 2008 compilation album Wisin y Yandel Presentan: La Mente Maestra (Wisin y Yandel present: the mastermind), a mixtape of previously unreleased tracks featuring a host of more underground Puerto Rican reggaetoneros and producers. The song was later included on the deluxe edition of Wisin y Yandel's 2009 album La Revolución as a bonus track, but Billboard listing it as DJ Nesty ft. Wisin y Yandel at the time (they now list it as "Wisin & Yandel Featuring Nesty") was only following the original parent album.

And to an extent putting the producer first makes sense, because while this is definitely a Wisin y Yandel song, it's not technically a reggaetón song: the dembow riddim never appears, only a stuttering loop during Wisin's verses. Wikipedia lists it as EDM, which whether accurate or not would be the first appearance of that particular tag on the Hot Latin #1s. There's definitely a sawtoothed synth rather reminiscent of the "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)" riff that cycles throughout, and the percussion is more or less disco: the detailed production by Nesty, Víctor "El Nasi" and Marioso could slot this directly into a turn-of-the-decade synthpop mix, no questions asked.

But Wisin and Yandel are still Wisin and Yandel: you can take the boys out of the reggaetón riddim, but you can't take the reggaetón out of the boys. Yandel's electro croon, Wisin's punchy rapping, and their constant shouted interruptions make even this moodily sparkling track as rowdy and cheerful as the rest of their #1 hits. The lyrics are their usual declarations of horniness and machismo: "Me Estás Tentando" means "you're tempting me" and Yandel's portrait of a dancing woman getting him excited is punctured by Wisin's more free-associative hype, calling himself "el tiburón a comerse la sirena" (the shark to eat up the mermaid). The video is all late-00s electro classiness (I swear I've seen dozens of rap, R&B, and dance acts on that set or ones very like it), the boys and some models striking poses against austere black-and-white light grids.

Wisin y Yandel (and their management) could be excused for believing that pure reggaetón would not be sustainable for a long-term pop career, some three years after it broke into #1 here, and so moving in a broader pop direction would only be canny. And this song was only #1 for a week in between Banda El Recodo reigns -- maybe the market was shifting away from urban tropical music entirely. Maybe. Stay tuned.

EMMANUEL, “ES MI MUJER”

28th March, 1987

Wiki | Video

Why do I put “pop idol” in the categories field when Emmanuel comes up in the draw? This song illustrates why: it’s the first song we’ve had here at the top of the Billboard Latin chart that sounds like the 1980s of myth and snark: completely synthesized, airbrushed, and blow-dried. To ears immersed in UK synth-pop, it may sound more 1982 than 1987; but a cursory Google search turns up the fact that it’s appeared on a budget Italo Disco compilation, and that nails the sound and aesthetic so precisely that I’m left wondering why I hadn’t thought of it. This isn’t Anglo pop, it’s Euro.

Which is a useful reminder that, though the Billboard chart doesn’t always necessarily reflect it, being focused on American Latin sales & radio (again, as distinct from Latin American sales & radio), that much of Latin America has closer cultural ties with Europe than Americans of the estadounidense stripe would expect. Spain and Portugal for obvious historic reasons; but Italian pop has always had a strong showing in the market as well, and French, Greek, and various Scandinavian acts have also done well in the American continents south of the Rio Grande. Italo disco – pop based on the Giorgio Moroder template – was the basic lingua franca of international pop in the 1980s and into the 90s; and the only thing particularly Mexican about Emmanuel here is his accent.

It’s not a particularly Mexican accent; I don’t mean that a listener in Barcelona would hear it the way a Londoner hears a Texas twang. It’s Standard Showbiz Spanish, the “accentless” accent that corresponds to the American English television announcer’s dialect, most strongly associated with California. Though if Emmanuel sounds like anyone American, he sounds like New Yorker Neil Diamond, a faint theatrical grit over a showman’s bellow.

It’s a slight irony that Emmanuel, with his manly croon, achieves effortlessly and (as it were) accidentally, what many of the New Pop chancers of five years previous were attempting: a sophisticated, elegant vocal over a sleek, throbbing synthetic sound. (In the attempt, many of them redefined sophisticated, elegant vocals. But no one thinks Phil Oakey or David Sylvain sounded like Sinatra.)

The song itself isn’t particularly notable, or not nearly as notable as its arrangement: a standard love song (the title translates to “she is my woman,” though from context he’s singing “you are my woman”). The only minor point of interest is when he plays with the meaning of the verb “querer.” “Te quiero,” he sings, meaning “I love you,” and then after a pause, adds “tener,” which changes the meaning of the entire phrase to “I want to have you.” Which is a cute, sexy anti-romantic gesture, but Doug Kihn or Corey Hart could have done as well. (They could also have had the same backing track, come to think of it.)

But speaking of the lyrics, this is also the first record we’ve met that an American’s (as in United States of) name is associated with. Co-writer K. C. Porter isn’t necessarily a household name even in the Miami and Los Angeles circles where he works, but his songwriting and production talents did well by Selena and Ricky Martin, to name only two major figures we’ll be meeting along the way. Seeds planted for the future; for now, just admire the totally-vanished aesthetic.