ENRIQUE IGLESIAS FT. JUAN LUIS GUERRA, “CUANDO ME ENAMORO”

12th June, 2010

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I've been writing -- one might even say complaining -- about Enrique Iglesias on this blog since his first appearance at the end of 1995. It's been fifteen years, and no one has been a more consistent presence here, to my general chagrin and occasional grudging approbation. In great part, this is because I've been comparing the Enrique Iglesias I've been hearing in those trawls through the past with the Enrique Iglesias I remember first clearly paying attention to in 2010, the Enrique Iglesias who chose this as the lead single from his ninth album, perhaps to shore up good faith with his core Latin audience before hitting the Top 40 with songs in English featuring the likes of Pitbull and Ludacris, perhaps to ride the bachata wave that Aventura's farewell was cresting, perhaps because it was just as consonant with the jangly rock en español that Diego Torres, Alejandro Fernández and David Bisbal were having hits with as it was with bachata.

But the poorly-aged video, a montage of narcissistic schoolboys playing dirty to win the attention of their female classmates, and the fact that the song had appeared, a week before the single hit #1, as the theme song to the Mexican telenovela of the same name, are perhaps stronger reasons for "Cuando Me Enamoro" leading off one of Iglesias' most globally successful string of singles. Iglesias has always been a kind of avatar of louche male privilege, and the narrative embedded in the video, of boys as pursuers and girls as the passive rewards of pursuit, is perfectly suited to both Iglesias' persona and to the Latin machismo that he, as rich as he undoubtedly is and as sensitive as he performs being, still perfectly represents.

Juan Luis Guerra's genial artistry co-signing this crass commercialism is the outlier; but as well and casaully as he outsings Enrique on this duet, he is merely a hired gun: the song was written by Iglesias and Cuban former jazzman turned pop songwriter Descemer Bueno, and the form of the song is strictly pop, without any of Guerra's prankish genre-bending. A bachata rhythm section supports a lilting rock sway, and the two men trade nostrums about the grand acts they would perform for love, describe the depths of emotion to which love sends them, and ultimately impute a Christological meaning to secular love ("me viene el alma al cuerpo" -- my soul enters my body, a pop detournement of the doctrine of the Incarnation). It's all perfectly in line with the romantic tradition of Spanish love poetry, and the semi-tropical rhythm and irregular bursts of melody serve the lyric well.

Make no mistake: I adored it at the time. If it ultimately rings hollow a decade later, perhaps especially by comparison with what Guerra had served up on his own only a week prior, put it down to my fuller experience with Enrique Iglesias, and my vastly decreased patience with boys-will-be-boys messaging throughout media.

DIEGO TORRES, “GUAPA”

 29th May, 2010

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The more things evolve and expand on the Hot Latin chart, the more the white male rockers on it remain entirely unchanged. Although Sin Bandera only had one #1 hit, their influence remains omnipresent: Noel Schajris co-wrote this song, perhaps the most uptempo thing he's been involved with that we've encountered.

We haven't encountered Diego Torres before, even though it feels like we have: Luis Fonsi, David Bisbal, Cristian Castro, and even the last few songs from Alejandro Fernández all sound pretty much like this, which is to say they sound like every generic post-R.E.M. rock act to get radio play since 1990. True, the opening notes suggest a groovier, bluesier track than it ends up being, and Torres plays the trad rocker game at least as well as Maná: the Motown stomp on the chorus is particularly attractive. But ultimately it still feels disconnected from and irrelevant to the more current sounds on the chart, even the centtury-old banda formations. The generic love-song sentiments, in which he compares his lover to a guardian angel who gives him wings, don't have anything to do with the bouncy music, and both have equally little to do with the broody video, in which Torres plays his own guardian angel who helps him undergo a generic Hollywood emotional catharsis.

Torres is a second-generation pop star in Argentina: his mother, Lolita Torres, was a popular film actress and singer during the Perón years, specializing in the Spanish and Argentine folk repertoire. His first band was formed in 1989, but he's been widely popular in Argentina since 1992, and had solidified his international reputation by 2000. This will be his only visit to the #1 spot unless the future is less youth-oriented than the present: his 2021 album presents him as an elder hippieish statesman of Latin pop, lending rockstar credibility to his younger urbano guests and getting world-music cred from the guests his own age.

ALEJANDRO FERNÁNDEZ, “SE ME VA LA VOZ”

6th February, 2010

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We haven't heard from Alejandro Fernández since 2004, and so much has changed since then. Maybe the most obvious change is signalled by the fact the single for "Se Me Va la Voz" (losing my voice) was supported by two remixes: a bachata one featuring Héctor Acosta, and an urbano one featuring Tito El Bambino. What we're missing, maybe more obviously from Alejandro Fernández than from anyone else, is a Mexican regional version. But that's because "Se Me Va la Voz" was the second single from Dos Mundos, which was a double album released as Dos Mundos: Tradición (a ranchera record) and Dos Mundos: Evolución (a modern pop/rock record). The first single, "Estuve", was from the Tradición side, and covers much the same themes, athough in a classicist black-and-white video compared to the hypercontemporary, moody pop/rock of "Voz."

"Se Me Va la Voz" was written by Roy Tavaré, a Dominican-born journeyman singer, songwriter, and arranger based in Miami, and produced by Áureo Baqueiro, a long-serving Mexican producer who was responsible for Sin Bandera's signature sound from nowhere. Comparing it to the sound of "Estuve" is instructive: Fernández sounds painfully generic and buried beneath the rock-band swell of the production here, where in the ranchera song his voice is given the sonic space to resonate with the superb technique I first admired him for way back in the late 90s.

Insofar as the song means anything more than "here's Alejandro Fernández singing a rock-inflected song" (complete with fourth-generation Beatlesesque na-na-nas), it's a song of romantic longing, the singer losing his voice because of desire for an unattainable woman. The fact that it ports over so easily to bachata and reggaetón is itself a cautionary sign: nothing about it is intrinsic to its form, and it just as easily slips out of the mind as it slipped into the ears, a one-week wonder at #1.

As of this writing, it's the last we'll hear from Alejandro Fernández: his one-time rivalry with the other second-generation pop pinup has been definitively won by Enrique Iglesias, whose comfort with the limited range and aggressive egotism of contemporary production far outstrips Fernández's. He remains an enormous star, but the contortions necessary to remain relevant in an ever-increasingly pop-focused market are beyond him. Ave, Alejandro.

CRISTIAN CASTRO, “AMOR ETERNO”

24th December, 2005

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A former teen idol negotiating his way into middle age has several models to choose from: on one side is Luis Miguel sinking into prematurely soporific nostalgia, and on the other is Ricky Martin remaining preternaturally youthful and au courant. Cristian's choice in 2005 was to change labels but keep on plowing his usual furrow. His previous appearances here have alternated between beautifully-sung ballads (Juan Gabriel at one point called him the most versatile voice in Mexico) and uptempo jangle-rock hits -- this is the latter, wholly in keeping with the twin themes of rock and reggaetón that have dominated 2005's Hot Latin #1s.

As the last #1 of 2005, it was really only a week-long interregnum amidst the 15-week reign of Daddy Yankee's "Rompe" (as though making up for the underperformance of "Gasolina"); it will be spring 2006 before there's a new #1. But it's also a beautiful way to close out this most pivotal of years in our travelogue, an evocation of the eternal truths of pop: love is what matters, a cool voice riding a hot, prettily-frenzied production will always have appeal, and syncopated rhythms make you want to dance.

But it's also a return to a subtle tradition in the Latin Pop chart that has few analogues in the Anglophone equivalents: it could easily, with only the listener's frame of reference changing, be a song about God rather than about an earthly lover. "Eternal love" is a deeply Romantic concept when applied to human pair bonding; depending on the philosophy of life you subscribe to, it may have more theological coherence than material. In any case, a chorus like "Your love changed me, it made me the man I am/You give me everything I want, you brought me peace/Heartache never again" has all-too-obvious significance to someone like me who grew up listening to pop simulacra directed exclusively toward Christ.

Of course, the glory of pop is that you don't have to choose. Obviously people feel that way about their earthly lovers too, and more power to them. Either way, Cristian's never been in better voice, and his angelic falsetto in the middle eight is a high point of a classy if never surprising record. This isn't the future of Latin Pop; but it's a delightful dead end.

CARLOS VIVES, “DÉJAME ENTRAR”

24th November, 2001

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"Hero" might have been Enrique Iglesias' most lasting contribution to English-language pop of the 2000s (though his, and everyone's, fortunes will change in the 2010s), but on the Latin chart, "Héroe" was only a week-long interregnum between the two most exciting Colombian talents of the period. We'd known Shakira already, and we know Carlos Vives, whose pop-vallenato "Fruta Fresca" was a genial way to close out 1999, but "Suerte (Wherever, Whenever)" and "Déjame Entrar" (Let Me In) were both declarations of a new assurance and global relevance in Caribbean mainland pop.

"Déjame Entrar" is a summery pop-vallenato-cum-cumbia jam produced by Emilio Estefan, and is again more of a global pop song with accordion than a traditional vallenato by any strict accounting. Vives himself admitted that it was impossible to separate what was Colombian from what was Cuban, Puerto Rican or Dominican in it: rhythmically, it's a tropical melange, with guitars as jangly and harmonies as smooth as any North American college rock band; the middle eight is particularly reminiscent of mid-90s alt-rock radio.

But if its pleasures are primarily on the surface, they're still exquisite. Vives' cheerful rock-derived vocals, the circular, boot-stomping rhythm, and the gorgeous textures from timbale to accordion to gaita (the indigenous Colombian flute) give his acoustic song as much energy and rhythmic complexity as any dance track, and the lyrics, an unsentimental (he likes the dirt under her nails), open-hearted request to love and be loved (the refrain "déjame entrar en tu mirada" means literally "let me into your gaze" but can be translated more idiomatically, "let me drown in your eyes"), without any of the emotional blackmail or self-aggrandizement common to male love songs (viz. "Héroe") is as much a breath of fresh air as the guitar strums and romantic, reflective accordion solo.

If "Héroe" is the overwrought fever-pitch fantasy of a narcissistic adolescent, "Déjame Entrar" is a self-possessed, grown-up pitch for a loving relationship between equals. Anglophone pop, being essentially adolescent, is structured to value the former over the latter; one of the wonderful things about Latin pop in this period is that there was still room for grownups.

CRISTIAN CASTRO, “AMOR”

3rd February, 1996

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When last we saw Cristian Castro, he was peddling a soft-rock version (complete with "tasteful" guitar and sax licks) of Luis Miguel's slick romántico. In the six years since then, however, Latin Pop has changed; what came as a moderately novel modernization then would be an unbearable throwback now. So luckily he too has advanced with the times; instead of Richard Marx in 1990, he's now upgraded to the Gin Blossoms in 1993.

This song is pure jangle-pop of the kind that was the most commercially appealing face of college rock in the late 80s and early 90s, R.E.M. and Gin Blossoms and Wildflowers-era Tom Petty and even echoes of the Lemonheads in Castro's smooth assurance, his mellifluous vocal just about the only thing connecting the song to Latin Pop traditions. If there's even a hint of the Rembrandts' terminally uncool "I'll Be There For You" (which I knew as a radio pop song before I knew it as the theme song to Friends), that's because it was one logical conclusion of the sound: this is surely as much trend-hopping as it is a deeply-felt love for the style, but that's fine. What matters is how convincing the song is.

And it's a feather-light construction, a song of hopeless love (I don't need to translate the title this time, do I?) delivered at such an easy, shuffling remove that, as with the Everly Brothers' proto-jangly "Bye Bye Love," you can't believe he's actually all that broken up about it. The guitars are not just for texture, either: this is straight-up mid-tempo rock, and if the unbelievably pretty Castro is still more pop star than rock & roller that doesn't mean the music is insincere. Rather, this is a hint of things to come. Just as rock is fading from prominence in Anglophone pop, it's experiencing a bullish renaissance in the Latin world. This is far from the last time I will use the Rock En Español tag.