The opening flourish of guitar-like cuatro
is instantly recognizable, a gentle but effective means of telling you
what you might’ve assumed to be true even before the song began: You’re
about to hear the remix of “Despacito.”
Again.
Unavoidable over the last few months on both the Internet and Top 40 radio, this sleek — and surprising — collaboration between Justin Bieber and two of Puerto Rico’s biggest stars, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, is without question the song of the summer.
It’s
sold more than 2 million downloads. It’s been streamed on Spotify
nearly 800 million times. And so far it’s spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on
Billboard’s Hot 100 — longer than any song except one: Mariah Carey and
Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day,” which logged 16 weeks atop the music
industry’s most closely watched singles chart in 1995 and 1996.
At
Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, “Despacito” is nominated for only one
prize — the result, MTV says, of Fonsi’s label not submitting the song’s
video for consideration in the major categories. But the prospect of
one of its competitors winning the trophy for song of the summer seems
beyond laughable.
“If you’d told me a few months ago that the song
was still going to be No. 1 in August, I would’ve been like, ‘There’s
no way — people are going to be sick of it,’” Fonsi said with a laugh.
“But here we are.”
The success of “Despacito,” whose title
translates to “slowly,” is to some extent an artistic triumph. A
seamless blend of pop and reggaeton, the expertly crafted song about a
sexual encounter zeros in on an emotional and aesthetic sweet spot; it
strikes an ideal balance of melody and rhythm, romance and lust.
But
it also happened in the right place at the right time. Sung mostly in
Spanish, “Despacito” has resonated with many listeners this year as an
implicit counterpoint to President Donald Trump’s tough rhetoric regarding Latinos and immigrants from Latin America.
Indeed,
Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, says his principal motivation in
putting the remix together was the idea of topping the Hot 100 while
Trump was in office.
“A song in Spanish is all over pop radio,”
Braun said, “in an America where young Latino Americans should feel
proud of themselves and their families’ native tongue.” Listen to the remix of "Despacito."That
political edge wasn’t necessarily in Fonsi’s mind when he and Erika
Ender, an experienced songwriter from Panama, came up with the tune in
2015. According to Ender, who’s also worked with Gloria Trevi and Los
Tigres del Norte, “Despacito” was born one afternoon at Fonsi’s house
after the two friends had caught up over coffee.
“We started
writing around 3 p.m. and finished around 6 with the song completed from
top to bottom,” Ender said. “We were looking for a very contagious
melody, and it came very easy.”
Well known among Latin pop fans as
a sensitive balladeer, Fonsi wanted a different kind of production for
the recorded version of “Despacito” — an “evolution” of his signature
style, as he described it, with a pronounced “urban” vibe à la recent
hits by Shakira and Maluma (“Chantaje”) and Enrique Iglesias and Nicky Jam (“El Perdón”).
So
after trying out a number of approaches, Fonsi and his producers sought
out Daddy Yankee, one of the driving forces behind reggaeton’s
synthesis of hip-hop and more traditional Latin music. (Even casual pop
listeners are likely to recall Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina,” which caught fire in the U.S. in 2004.)
The
duo’s original take on “Despacito” came out in January 2017 and blew up
immediately in Latin America, thanks in large part to widespread
sharing of the song’s video on social media, said Jesús López, who
oversees Universal Music’s Latin division.
An industry veteran who
helped make hits of Iglesias’ “Bailando” and Los Del Río’s “Macarena” —
the latter was the last Spanish-language song to top the Hot 100, more
than two decades ago — López said he’s never seen a song grow as quickly
as “Despacito,” whose video has the most views of any clip on YouTube:
3.3 billion at last count.
Yet the song wasn’t just attracting
young people permanently attached to their phones. López recalled
watching Fonsi perform “Despacito” in concert earlier this year and
seeing him inspire a diverse audience — “from kids to grandparents,” the
executive said — to sing along.
Still, there
was a crowd the song hadn’t quite won over by the beginning of April,
and that was mainstream American pop fans. Ender said she, Fonsi and
Daddy Yankee wrote an English translation of “Despacito” in the hopes of
getting an American singer to take part in a remix.
And Monte
Lipman, chairman of Republic Records, said he’d spoken with Braun (whose
other clients include Usher and Ariana Grande) about various strategies
for breaking the record in this country.
The singer they got
wasn’t one they’d been courting. According to Braun, Bieber (who’s
Canadian) heard “Despacito” in a club while on tour in Colombia; after
seeing the room react to the song, he got in touch with Braun and asked
the manager what he thought about lending his voice to a new version.
Braun
liked the idea, but Bieber wanted to move fast. So the manager called
Poo Bear, a songwriter and producer with whom Bieber has collaborated
closely in recent years, and had him get to work that night on a fresh
verse for the singer.
“It was my anniversary, I’ll never forget,”
Poo Bear said. “Scooter booked the Record Plant” — a recording studio in
Hollywood — “and after I got off my date for my anniversary I went into
the studio around 12:30.” Watch the video for the original version of "Despacito."The
verse Poo Bear wrote — and quickly sent to Bieber in Bogotá — was in
English, which Braun figured would help ease American listeners into the
song. (Sure enough, Bieber’s verse about “the way you nibble on my ear”
comes first in the remix, right after that fluttering cuatro.)
Yet
Braun says his client wanted to sing in Spanish. “What’s the point of
doing a gigantic Latino record unless you’re going to do it for the
Latino market?” Braun said the singer asked.
That thinking aligned
with Braun’s own ambition to counteract what he saw as an
anti-immigrant movement by which “young Latino American kids were …
being told that speaking Spanish made them un-American.”
So in a
reversal of crossover-record protocol, Bieber recorded the song’s chorus
in Spanish, learning the lyrics phonetically over the course of a
four-hour session in a Colombian studio, Braun said.
Fonsi said
the gesture struck him as “very brave.” And audiences responded:
Released in mid-April, the remix of “Despacito” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100
a month later and hasn’t left the top spot yet.
The
two record executives behind the song, López and Lipman, both point to
streaming as a crucial component of the song’s success.
According
to Lopez, the numbers “Despacito” was racking up on YouTube and Spotify
offered proof to traditional gatekeepers — radio programmers, television
talent bookers and the like — that demand for the record was high. And
that sped up “Despacito’s” journey toward more old-fashioned media
plays, which in turn led to further action on the new streaming
platforms.
Not that the song’s popularity insured Bieber, a
reliable lightning rod for both positive and negative attention, against
all criticism. When video surfaced online
showing Bieber struggling to sing along with “Despacito” in a New York
nightclub — “I don’t know the words, so I say Dorito,” he appears to
sing — many observers accused him of the precise kind of cultural
insensitivity Braun says he was working against.
The manager
deflected that idea, saying Bieber doesn’t speak Spanish and has never
claimed to — which is why, he added, the singer has never properly
performed “Despacito” in concert.
“I think that whenever you have
great success, you’re going to have some people who want to tear it
down,” Braun said. “But at the end of the day, the guys made a great
song.”
And there are sure to be more aiming for its reach,
everyone involved agreed. Lipman said the story of “Despacito” reminds
him of the introduction of SoundScan in 1991, when that system’s
computerized tally of record sales suddenly showed the music industry
how huge a previously underestimated — and soon-to-be-emulated — act
like N.W.A really was.
“We always knew Latin was important,”
Lipman said. “But I don’t think anybody realized the popularity of Latin
music until we saw the boom of streaming.”
Last month Lipman’s label paired Fonsi with another of its acts, Joe Jonas’ electro-funk group DNCE, for a bilingual remix of DNCE’s song “Kissing Strangers.”
The
song is a reasonably good time, and it’s consistent with what Fonsi
described as his approach going forward: “this sort of fusion between
melodic pop and a more rhythmic angle.”
At the moment, though, the
“Kissing Strangers” remix has fewer than half a million views on
YouTube. Does it stand a chance of becoming the next “Despacito”?
“Oh,
there will only be one ‘Despacito,’” Fonsi replied with a laugh. “There
won’t be any more ‘Despacitos’ — from me or from anybody.” Beyond “Despacito”
As
Fonsi suggests, the success of his song may well make it one of a kind.
But “Despacito” is undoubtedly clearing a path for future crossover
hits. Here are three to keep an ear on. Listen to "Mi Gente."J Balvin & Willy William, “Mi Gente”
Already
a No. 1 track on Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart, “Mi Gente” pairs
Balvin, the Colombian heartthrob known to American listeners for his
appearance on a remix of Bieber’s “Sorry,” with the French DJ William
for a thumping club jam that echoes earlier duets by Enrique Iglesias
and Pitbull. Listen to the remix of "Reggaetón Lento."CNCO featuring Little Mix, “Reggaetón Lento (Remix)”
From
Menudo to Aventura, great boy bands have figured as prominently in
Latin pop as in the American variety. The latest is CNCO, which formed
in 2015 after the members met as contestants on the singing show “La
Banda.” This remix of its “Reggaetón Lento,” with input from the British
girl group Little Mix, is roaring up the charts across the pond. Listen to "Me Rehúso."Danny Ocean, “Me Rehúso”
Reportedly
written for his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day, this Venezuelan
crooner’s blissed-out love song has already spawned an English-language
rendition called “Baby I Won’t.” But it’s the original in Spanish that’s
racked up more than half a billion plays on YouTube. mikael.wood@latimes.com Twitter: @mikaelwood ALSO 'It's part of our DNA': How California shaped the music of L.A.'s Haim What Sam Hunt had to say about cultural integration at the Greek Theatre 'Hamilton' in L.A.: Think of the touring show as a remix of the Broadway smash
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