Fellas.
It's time to talk about latin music.
If you tried to deny that reggaeton and latin pop have exploded in worldwide popularity this past year...
...I'd probably spit on your face or something.
Obviously, not much has changed around here in Latin America, but there have been plenty of chances for crossovers in the US or even Europe...
...something which was previously incredibly unlikely for songs not by Enrique Iglesias.
And it's not hard to pinpoint exactly which song made the barrier tear to pieces.
I've already talked many times about Despacito...
...its amazing composition and production, and the impact it had on how the world could look at latin music in a different light.
Despacito's already left its mark in the history of popular music, no one's gonna deny its status as a modern classic.
But right now, the important question is:
now what?
More specifically, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee have reached their undisputed peak,
so now, what's their next move? How do they capitalize on their success?
Well, the answer to this question was pretty unclear for a while...
...but finally, after over a year later, Fonsi and Yankee have appropriate follow ups to Despacito...
...and both are doing incredibly well at the same time...
...and even though I'm not surprised by that, I believe it's a great sign that Despacito didn't ruin their careers.
Nonetheless, what is interesting is how these two artists got to this point...
...because honestly: the ways in which they did were massively different.
Let's talk about Fonsi first, who had more at stake.
Let's not forget that before Despacito, the last real hit he had had had been in 2009...
...if Fonsi seriously wanted to remain as a giant in Latin music...
...he had to deliberately think about how to maintain his audience.
And the best thing he came up with has featuring in a Spanglish remix of the new DNCE song.
No one got it, no one liked it, and it was quickly forgotten because my God.
You get Joe Jonas, Luis Fonsi and Nicki Minaj in the same song, like...
But his next move was even more bizarre:
making a remix of a song from 2016, Gyal You A Party Animal.
Ironically, a song that had gotten popular because of a remix with Daddy Yankee.
Another remix no one got and everyone ignored.
Although I respect Fonsi.
I like to think that he took his time, spent his new fortune remixing songs he liked...
...only to later come back with the explosion that is Échame la Culpa.
In the sense of marketing, he did practically everything right.
He hired the same producers from Despacito, got Demi Lovato to guarantee international crossover...
...gave it a colorful video, etc.
And it worked, this song has been a huge success...
...obviously not to the scale of Despacito, but hype can only take you so far if people don't like your product...
...Taylor Swift can testify to that.
However, 2017 was an entirely different year for Daddy Yankee.
Unlike Luis Fonsi, Yankee never stopped being successful, he's always had non-stop hits.
Even weeks before Despacito came out, Shaky Shaky, one of his worst songs ever, had hit the Hot 100.
So, the one thing he had to do was to remain active…
...and that's exactly what he did.
He had a song with Ozuna he had released just before Despacito...
he featured on a lot of big hits...
he released only one single all year long which capitalized on the rise of latin trap...
Vuelve with Bad Bunny, which did very well, because it's Daddy Yankee and Bad Bunny.
But if there's something I learned after listening to Daddy Yankee ever since I was 6 years old,
is that the most successful Daddy Yankee is Daddy Yankee by himself.
Not Daddy Yankee with features, or collabs, Daddy Yankee works best alone.
He released a song with a simple name, he goes back to the classic reggaeton style...
he gives it a summer-y vibe, releases it in the middle of summer...
this is his official comeback, this is Daddy Yankee the way we know him and kinda stand sometimes.
And so I thought, since both Fonsi and Yankee simultaneously have equally successful hits...
why not talk about them both at the same time?
I mean, no one else is gonna do that. Most latino critics (which there are many few of)
will dismiss any popular reggaeton song because we have that sort of mildly justified but nonetheless horrible elitism.
So ok, how do we compare Échame la Culpa and Dura?
Let's have a look at Fonsi first.
The thing about this song that's both an advantage and a disadvantage is that its instrumentation and production are incredibly similar to Despacito.
You get the same guitar with a similar radiant, pretty tone...
the percussion with the same progression as any reggaeton song...
keys that fill up the instrumental but don't really give us an interesting arrangement or melody.
In that sense, for the most part, it sounds pretty good
The thing is that it borrows a bit too much from Despacito...
so when it wants to switch up the formula even just a tiny bit...
you can clearly tell, and honestly it doesn't work.
Despacito was so good because all the elements, production, composition, arrangements...
everything fit together in natural and perfect way, there were no loose ends.
Échame la Culpa clearly wants to be Despacito part 2 but it also wants to break away and it can't pull it off.
They add a ukelele that doesn't blend well with the rest...
they try way too hard to fill up the instrumental with effects that stand out for the worst...
the percussion gets just a little bit louder but that's enough to eclipse the rest of the instrumentation...
and they add so many effects to it that are really uncessesary.
They use percussion as if they were working with trap drums, which they're obviously not.
It also has a faster tempo than Despacito, which makes the song sound a lot more rushed...
getting rid of the flow and serene pacing of Despacito.
Now, I wanna clear up that despite everything I'm saying...
this does sound pretty good and much better than most of its contemporaries...
the thing is, it wants to be Despacito, and it's not.
And it doesn't have a strong enough identity on its own to, even inadvertently, become its own piece.
Dura, on the other hand, is much more independent.
Dura is surprisingly one of the most instrumentally colorful songs I've heard from Daddy Yankee.
It has a lot of truly interesting stuff.
Let's see, we got various vocal samples, summer-y synths, little trumpets popping out of nowhere...
a lot of synth work plenty of tones and textures, and an honestly incredible percussion.
You can hear the percussion well and it has power, but it lets the rest take major presence...
and the sound it has is excellent, It's surprisingly sticky... literally.
every kick is accompanied with these bubblegum-like pops.
It makes the percussion sound playful and have color and style, it has a bigger role than simply marking the tempo.
It's an attention to detail that's rarely heard in latin music, I gotta give props for that.
Because of all that, Dura is much… lighter instrumentally.
There's nothing in it that sounds too heavy like in Échame la Culpa.
And lyrically, that applies too.
Usually, lyrics don't really matter in reggaeton songs, especially with Daddy Yankee...
but this song takes influences from Despacito.
It's not as sexual and allegorical but it does have that not so subtle, flirty tone.
"When I saw her"
I wondered if that woman was meant for me
Very similar intro, he saw her, liked her.
"Forgive me, I had to tell you"
"You look"
Oh, yeah.
I had forgotten.
"You look"
Ok, so for those of you who don't know what 'dura' means....
it's a compliment, obviously.
It's like a nicer, more delicate way of saying 'hot'...
with a mix of a word like 'thick'.
A perfect midpoint between the gentle and the obscene.
It's a much more refined and cleaner version of what Daddy Yankee usually does...
which can be a lot more crass and never worked for him...
because Daddy Yankee has the same amount of charisma as a pencil.
Someone who does have a lot of charisma is Luis Fonsi...
and that charisma is incredibly misused in Échame la Culpa.
This song is really ambitious, and I respect it for that.
Lyrically, it's about a breakup and both Fonsi and Demi take the blame as to why their relationship didn't work.
"I need to accept that you're not the bad one here"
"The bad guy is me"
"I wouldn't wanna be in your place"
"Because your one mistake was knowing me"
And there's something in here that could work.
There's potential for some sort of contrast between an uptempo instrumental and darker lyrics.
But they don't pull it off, simply because both Fonsi and Demi sing in such a jovial, joyous way...
so happy to admit that they were the ones who fucked up and… it doesn't work.
"It's best to forget and leave it as it is"
"Put the blame on me"
There's a disconnect between the content and how it's presented.
No person would own up to their mistakes in such an enthusiastic way...
and I don't feel like dancing when listening to this if I don't feel that that tonal dissonance is well realized.
And it's a shame because Fonsi and Demi have a lot of chemistry and they try really hard.
Fonsi has a natural charisma to him but Demi's spanish is surprisingly good,
her diction is really solid.
I mean, obviously she sounds a lot more at home in her verse in English...
which is incredibly basic and they really didn't need to repeat it twice.
"I don't really really wanna fake it no more"
"Play me like the Beatles baby, just Let It Be"
What? Why? Like-
And they play it 4 times throughout the song, 4 fucking times, I can't believe it.
I say it again, the song has a lot of ambition,
I've a lot of respect for it wanting to do something even slightly different,
but the way in which they tried just wasn't enough.
They took too many chances and few of them landed.
On the other hand, Dura is much less ambitious.
We've already established that the lyrics are pretty stupid but harmless,
but I gotta say, although usually Daddy Yankee gets to convince me as a performer...
as much as Macri gets to convince me that things are going fine in this piece of shit government-
here he really pulls off his melodic flows.
And Yankee gets to maintain that level of melodic quality during the verses along with a simple flow,
where he's much less obscene than usual, and he gets to be pretty entertaining
"The powerful one, kinda scandalous one"
"There may be other women but you're something else"
"You can feel that perfume in the air"
"Just like Argentina"
"You bring me good vibes (Buenos Aires)"
In his second verse, he even takes on a faster, really focused flow and cuts it before it gets tiring.
"What's your name? Where are you from?"
"Give me your number so I can be with you for a long time"
Oh, and the chorus is one of the best he's had in his entire career.
It's just really well-organized, how they go from repetition to some rushed, dynamic melodies...
that are delightfully playful with the autotune.
"You look"
"Mamacita, you raised the bar"
It's obviously not the perfect refrain of Despacito, it's much more basic, but efficient, this is seriously catchy.
"I give you a 20 out of 10"
"You look"
The art of repetition.
The chorus of Échame la Culpa is… ok,
it's catchy, it sticks in your head, kinda.
Look, it's reggaeton, it has a simple as fuck chord progression, it can't not be catchy,
but the thing is, for starters, the song is really short, not even 3 minutes long,
it doesn't leave room for any section to develop or stand out.
And every line in the chorus is like disconnected from the rest of the lines,
there's so much space between them and no real progression from one melody to another.
The 'échame la culpa' refrain is the only one that's truly excellent,
mostly because of the way Fonsi and Demi harmonize.
But Demi tries to tie in the rest with adlibs that don't work as transitions.
Also Fonsi sings with this production that makes his voice sound much deeper than it is.
I don't know, it sounds weird.
Oh, and also there's this sort of bridge full of millennial whoops that don't sound good,
and there's a track of Demi singing that's excruciatingly thin and high-pitched
and just low enough in volume for me to notice it, and it sounds really bad.
And they don't even try to connect the melodies together.
Oh, and in the final bridge there's this one adlib by Fonsi that's not tied to anything and it sounds like shit.
Being a good critic doesn't equal pointing out everything I like and don't like,
but fuck me, I'll do it anyway.
Look, I don't think it's gonna be a surprise when I say Dura is obviously the best out of both songs.
For the simple reason that it doesn't aim too high and doesn't let me down in practically any aspect,
while Échame la Culpa had a great concept and parts that work,
but it didn't have the right people to make it live up to its full potential.
And I wanna make it clear that even with my criticism, I really like both songs,
and they definitely deserve the success they've gotten.
And they're much better than a good junk of the usual shithole that is regggaeton.
And if you think a song with ambition and ideas or even a fun song that sounds good shouldn't be hard to find,
you really, really, really have no idea.
My God.
I hate Ozuna, I hate Ozuna.
Shakira's been wasting her talent in a way that just breaks my heart.
I swear to God I'm going to kill Ozuna.
Oh look, there's something interesting, that's well done, sounds good, thank you.
I'm gonna finish this video and you'll be back to your reggaeton-free life,
I won't.
Goodbye.
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