VICTOR MANUELLE, “SI TÚ ME BESAS”

18th February, 2012

Wiki | Video

Víctor Manuelle's second and final appearance in these pages comes eight years after his first, which I called overdue at the time; his one-time rival, Marc Anthony, has been and will continue to be a much more regular presence. But Manuelle seems content to settle into an early middle age here, with a lively song about the delights of kissing; in the video he plays a smiling, slightly stocky Cupid to a young, spectacularly beautiful interracial couple in the streets of San Juan, and despite the modern, hustling urgency of the salsa music, with a buried reggaeton pulse deep in the mix, it reminds me of nothing so much as one of Maurice Chevalier's midcentury Hayes-compliant odes to love and romance in which he merely plays the role of avuncular observer.

The real delight of the song is in the soaring melody, which Manuelle's longtime band swerves into with gusto, and the engaged musicianship of his own performance. Once more, his legendary ability as a sonero is given short shrift here, as the ecstatic son which closes the song is only really a couple more choruses that he improvises slightly over, more in an r&b tradition than a salsa one. And the lyrical promises of devotion, safety, and sexual gratification that will be the beloved's if she kisses him are all fairly generic and rote, more focused on the singer's desire than hers.

But then it's just nice to be able to hear some genuine salsa at this late stage in the Hot Latin chart; Marc Anthony was last heard bellowing the chorus to a Pitbull party track, the kind of sellout move that Víctor Manuelle would never consider (or, perhaps, be invited to at this point in his career). Like every other new song so far in 2012, "Si Tú Me Besas" was only at #1 for a week, a pattern that will carry throughout much of the year until the shift to streaming happens. The last gasp of musical diversity at #1 will be glorious while it lasts.

VÍCTOR MANUELLE, “TENGO GANAS”

17th April, 2004

Wiki | Video

2004 has been a year of belated appearances at #1 -- first Paulina Rubio, now Víctor Manuelle, who had been second only to Marc Anthony as a leading voice of the younger generation of New York salsa singers in the 90s. But although his albums had been cracking the Billboard 2000 since 1999, it wasn't until his ninth album that he was rewarded with his first Hot Latin #1.

In fairness to the Latin radio-listening public, it's a hell of a song. Post-millennial salsa appearances here have been patchy at best: Gilberto Santa Rosa is a legend, but "Que Alguien Me Diga" isn't really salsa; Son By Four were to salsa what *NSYNC were to R&B; Gloria Estefan opted for Cuban nostalgia instead; and only India knocked both sound and performance out of the park. "Tengo Ganas" (I Want) is both classic and modern; as a song, it would have been thoroughly at home in the 80s salsa romántica wave, but Manuelle's detailed, sensitive performance and the plush punchiness of the production (listen for the pause and rush before the chorus) make it fit right in with the Ricky Martins and Shakiras of the modern pop chart.

Manuelle's primary claim to fame is as one of the great soneros of his generation, a singer whose mastery of the improvised post-song son section of a salsa performance (the bit when the other performers chant a scrap of the lyric in unison) was matched only by Gilberto Santa Rosa (who gave him his first break when Manuelle was still in high school). He finds the pocket and lingers in it easily here, but the son is abbreviated because it's a pop record rather than an extended salsa workout.

We'll hear from him again, though not for some time. He hasn't gone away, by any means, although he prefers to make the music industry come to him rather than chasing trends by singing anything other than salsa. His most recent high-profile single was a collaboration with a fellow Puerto Rican, rapper Bad Bunny, which fits Manuelle's silky salsa into the era of reggaeton and Latin trap. This travelogue started in 1986, which felt so removed from 2010 as to be alien; from 2004, we can just glimpse 2018 on the horizon.