14Just Just Another Another Lonely Lonely
Latin Hit? We’ve seen it before, the querky pop tune with a tropical feel that gets under the UK’s skin for a while. Every so often they hit this cold little island, create a Latin craze and then disappear. In the nineties we had ‘Mambo no.5’ and ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ and in the noughties we had ‘Gasolina’. So is this summer’s Latin hit ‘Despacito’ any different? Amaranta Wright thinks so, and explores what the record-breaking song says about the changing nature of the music industry. The UK is notoriously stubborn when it comes to embracing music in another language. No matter how catchy the tune, consumers can never quite bring themselves to take it seriously. It may move the stiffest hips, some even find themselves singing along, but it will never quite escape that damning adjective ‘cheesy’ and surpass the ironic inference, to acquire the perception of coolness. One cannot help think that this time, however, things are different. The eleven week chart reign of ‘Despacito’ featuring Daddy Yankee and Luis Fonsi, has been already followed by another Latin track at no.14 ‘Subeme la radio’ (Enrique Iglesias and Zion and Lennox) and J Balvin’s ‘Mi Gente’ at no.12. The UK’s biggest girl band Little Mix has even teamed up with Latin boy band CNCO to chart ‘Reggeatón Lento’. It’s the first time ever that four Latin songs have appeared in the UK’s Top 20 at the same time.
So what's different this time?
Gasolina
The word on everyone’s lips is ‘streaming’. ‘Despacito’ is officially the most viewed song in Internet history, accruing more than 3bn views on YouTube. The Puerto Rican hit was already no.1 for four weeks in the UK before Radio 1 (the UK’s traditional hit-maker) even played the song. It flew over the heads of mainstream radio and, as if not knowing what to make of it, the only media coverage referred not to the value of the song itself, but to the viral phenomenon. “Thanks to streaming services, Latin hits now have more visibility in countries that previously might have ignored them,” wrote the Guardian in a brief article. There was no analysis of the song or interview with the artists (Fonsi was erroneously referred to as a reggeatón artist), perhaps for fear of drawing attention to the obvious; that gone are the days of traditional media influence over music consumption.