TITO EL BAMBINO & MARC ANTHONY, “¿POR QUÉ LES MIENTES?”

19th January, 2013

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The streaming-era chart can still be punctuated by one-week wonders, especially on songs like this that unite two proven hitmakers who can marshal their overlapping fanbases to stream their newest single. Although radio helped as well: the single was released in November, and it peaked at #1 on the Airplay chart two weeks before it made its appearance here. It would remain there for two further weeks, while the streaming-included chart moved on to a more resounding crossover hit.

I took Tito El Bambino's previous appearance here as a breath of fresh air, but this song harkens back to his first appearance back in 2009, another high-drama cumbiarengue song combining classic Latin tropical arrangements with modern plainspoken urbano -- unless I'm much mistaken, this is the first time that the word mierda (shit) has been heard at this chart's #1.

The full line is "me trataste como mierda ante la gente" (you treated me like shit in front of people), an accusation toward a former partner who is now attempting to cause drama about the singer's current partner; the entire song is a refusal to be pulled back into the self-pitying narcissistic vortex of a toxic ex, which would, I'll admit, be more attractive to me coming from women towards a presumptively male interlocutor. But Tito and Marc make it work, particularly Marc -- who had recently been in the news for his separation from Jennifer Lopez; art is not biography, but fans undoubtedly read this song in reference to her.

But then Marc Anthony could make anything sound gripping and real -- El Bambino's more vacuous tonality, digitally smoothed and auto-harmonized as it is, has to rely on reggaetón-trained rhythmic variation in order to even the playing field and not be outshined on his own song. He doesn't quite pull it off, in my estimation: the penultimate chorus, which he takes instead of Marc Anthony, feels weightless by comparison with all the others. But I have to applaud the construction and especially the arrangement of the song: with its glossy strings, punchy horns, and busy percussion, it has a classic Latin sound but enough of a modern bite to make it more than an exercise in nostalgia.

Airplay Watch:

• Tito El Bambino & Marc Anthony, "¿Por Qué Les Mientes?"
• Discussed above.

TITO EL BAMBINO, “DAME LA OLA”

1st September, 2012

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Over the past few years of coverage, I've continued to use the "reggaeton" tag for tropical urbano dance songs that don't actually use the reggaetón rhythm, often because the performers got famous doing reggaetón and would return to it by the end of the decade, so it's more of a scene tag than a strictly musical one. But one effect of doing that is that a tabulation by tags might not be able to indicate just how good it feels to finally get the proper dembow riddim in a #1 song again, even if it is just a goofy horndog one-week-wonder.

I have no specific memory of hearing this song at the time, although it's familiar enough that I'm sure I did. It has very little distinctive about it; for example, it's neither as rhythmically, melodically, musically, or even lyrically interesting as Tito El Bambino's previous appearance here -- but that was a proper song, carefully written and produced to appeal to a wide number of audiences, and this is just a club banger. I say that with love: I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about "El Amor" despite its virtues, while "Dame la Ola" strikes me as a breath of fresh air despite, perhaps even because of, its genericness.

"Dame la Ola" literally means "give me the wave," but the wave it's requesting is not a motion of hands but of hips. "Give me a shake" might be a closer translation; "dance up on me" might be truer in sentiment. The video, all sunshine, tourist-friendly boardwalk, and a rail-slender model gyrating unconvincingly, does a good job indicating what thin gruel this is for fans of reggaetón's origins in whining-and-bouncing dancehall. But even so, this is this travelogue's first reggaetón proper song, with no other genre inmixing, since 2008. Even if it's shallow and lame, it feels good.

TITO EL BAMBINO, “EL AMOR”

16th May, 2009

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Héctor y Tito had flourished as a reggaetón duo before reggaetón came anywhere near disturbing the placidity of the Hot Latin #1s; they split in 2004, two years before Daddy Yankee broke through. And since Héctor El Father belatedly appeared in these pages with "Sola", it's only fair that his one-time partner gets his own showcase. But where Héctor had applied the dembow riddim to vaguely socially-conscious portent, Tito El Bambino abandons reggaetón entirely for a cumbia/merengue hybrid that would otherwise be choking in sentimentality.

"El Amor" was named Billboard's Hot Latin Song of the Year for 2009, as well as being nominated for numerous Latin Grammy, Lo Nuestro, and Juventud awards. It's exactly the kind of well-formed, classily-produced, tradition-respectful (and of course high-selling) song that industry awards exist to celebrate, its lyrics a string of platitudes about love that nobody but a dialectical materialist would disagree with, the slight digital-processing sheen on Tito's voice the only concession to the technofuturism that reggaetón and the broader dance-oriented landscape were imposing on the pop charts.

With string charts, horn charts, and complex Caribbean percussion giving the song a merengue bounce and a cumbia shuffle, it satisfied every aging tropical-airplay DJ annoyed by the urban hip-hop derived music driving out the merengue and salsa that had been their bread and butter for three decades. As if to shore up that support, Tito released three duet versions of the song: a salsa version with La India, and two remixes of the original with Mexican-American ranchera singer Jenni Rivera and Puerto Rican ballad singer Yolandita Monge. (I believe this is, sadly, as close as Jenni will ever come to making this travelogue, an indicator of the chart's limitations at capturing true greatness.)

But despite the institutional support, "El Amor" was only on top of the chart for two non-consectuive weeks, separated by a two-week reign from the next entry. We'll see Tito again, but it won't be for a while; the next several years are among the most crowded in chart history.