Rubbing my hands together…
I imagine that some of the people who visit this blog every week (and judging by the seriousness and rigour I try to transmit in each text) will think that I have no bad opinions about certain types of music or that I don’t like to spill blood, but I think that in today’s case it is necessary to bring out the worst in me. I bring you the most repulsive, vomitous, pestilent and coronavirus-carrying songs that have given me the most embarrassment in my life.
Watch out because it’s intense and not for the faint-hearted. You will notice that most of the works I will mention are collaborations, which clearly shows us how delicate it is to bring two active minds together in the creative process, leaving aside some collaborations that especially smack of anxiety to obtain large amounts of money.
10 Esto no para Kase O ft sociedad alcohólica
Kase O has made brilliant mixes with different groups and DJs throughout his career, but sometimes he has made poor choices (especially in collaborations with some lesser-known rappers or local artists).
With Sociedad Alkoholica he already made a whole album a few years ago and in my opinion the mix of styles was terrible. In fact, I, an unconditional fan of Violadores del verso and in particular of Kase, couldn’t even listen to the album once. Now, in one of his latest published tracks, he has chosen to collaborate with them again to cover this song from their album El círculo: Esto no para.
Praxis
Adapting the rapping to the hardcore style of Soziedad Alkohólica creates this kind of weird metal without pedigree. The punchy, aggressive flow of the original song is interesting, along with the original base, which is also metal but the distortion is more controlled.
In the version with Soziedad Alkohólica, the “rapping”, surrounded by the half-punk guitars and with the distortion at 200%, remains in no-man’s land and loses all personality.
A positive “but”
Anyway, this track is in the very last place because the musical production fits very well with the original base in a way, as it is still very powerful and transmits very well the rage of Javato’s message of social protest, but in my opinion Soziedad Alkohólica’s music makes everything bland with that lack of melodic concept that they cover with metal punctures and cymbal sounds that mess up the audio everywhere.
9 Bye bye by David Civera
In this position dedicated to the most regrettable of Hispanic pop I didn’t know whether to put tracks derived from cheap and bad viral music such asLa camisa negra by Juanes, the very bad Cuando tú vas by Chenoa or Torero by Chayanne, so know that the choice is totally arbitrary as you will see later in other posts such as Shakira’s, as all these songs are equally pathetic (that is to say, practically 100%).
The framework
Here we find simplistic melodies that show the speed at which the song was produced and the lack of love for a well constructed and fresh production. However, this song gets 9th place because the instrumentalists who recorded the base (especially the brass) are spectacular in terms of interpretation and technique.
8 Ni una sola palabra Paulina Rubio
Continuing with bad songs that have the same harmony as Despacito by Luis Fonsi, we have in eighth place this little torment from the queen of autotune. A simplistic vocal melody that follows the harmony like a lapdog rather than having independence of movement outlining the harmonic progression. Basic “sol fa mi re do” descents (literally), and elementary grade 1 propulsions with a mediocre voice lacking depth and technique.
7 Looking for paradise Alice Keys ft. Alejandro Sanz
A strange mix of Ryb or soul a la Beyoncé mixed with this kind of ballad style with flamenco by Sanz. Both tried to compose a global anthem in which the idea was that positivity and good vibes would predominate.
The concept is well worked out
But the song sucks: the vocal styles have nothing to do with each other, and they come together and alternate during the chorus, a real oil-and-water cocktail that we savoured for years on the radio and that never deserved to make it around the world.
6 Sexy señorita Abraham Mateo
A more than catchy, catchy track, with a base of old-fashioned and outdated electronica, almost reminiscent. It’s even ridiculous how little unity of style there is in the track, with that old-fashioned black & white 90s vibe, and combined with the tacky Spanglish of the lyrics it almost causes eardrum cancer. It’s a dubious credit to the singer that his career took off with this aberration.
5 Loba Shakira
What to say about this song? It was very hard to listen all the time to those overacted howls at the end of the phrases and the Chinese pentatonic used in a tacky and meaningless way, as if desperately looking for fresh musical formulas.
It’s hard to make a top with such bad music….
As I mentioned in previous posts, although there are other equally or mostly regrettable songs in the artist’s career such as Rabiosa, Loca or the classic Waka waka which ruined the 2010 World Cup with its catchy style, I prefer to put one slip per artist, and those who have so many are another world.
4 Persona guapa Paula Gonu
When I heard this song for the first time my reaction was to think “normal, coming from an influencer with 0 musical career and who tries to sell her mainstream discourse full of stale ideas of body positive and that we are all wonderful and beautiful in our own way” (an ideal that in my opinion is unrealistic and infantilises people, although we should be aware of our limits instead of denying them or turning them around to fall into self-deception).
Now I’m listening to it again and I’m thinking: “boy, how right I was when I thought that”. But apart from this stale and unrealistic message, the song once again uses the harmony of the famous Despacito and derivatives.
Focus makes music more palatable
And Despacito is not a song I’m passionate about, but it’s more listenable than this one, which is a merit considering that in both the vocal melody only reinforces the basic harmony instead of establishing an independent vocal melody.
3 Medellín Madonna ft. Maluma
In this song/video clip the sexual empowerment that we once admired in Madonna is left in a silly and childish playfulness with Maluma. What became clear to me when I first listened to the work was that the styles of Maluma in reggaeton and Madonna in that mid-’90s Anglo-Saxon pop don’t even go together.
On this issue it is all about polar opposites:
He with his voice as it is and she with that weird, semi-robotic EQ; the chopstick attitude of the one and the dangerous-cat vibe of the other (once again, out of fashion)… and more than for Maluma I feel sorry for Madonna, who has had very few slips and has been a woman with an amazing commercial vision and distinction, but it is known that with almost 60 years old visionaries also start to develop some astigmatism.
2 Dancing in the street Mick Jagger ft. David Bowie
Yes, my friends, this moment in the top had to come. Anyway, this case is quite well known. Two geniuses with different visions of music got together to release a single that had to be a hit. These artists tried to unite their talents, looking for a middle ground between their different worlds. And how did it go? Well, it turned out to be a kind of teenage rock in the style of Grease.
What’s wrong with it?
Not as such, but I think the problem is the figures in contrast with the discourse of the characters in the video clip, that is to say, the role of both doesn’t fit with what they had really sold throughout their career: Jagger is a drug addict hooked on prostitution who makes rock and roll and whose soul was given to the devil, probably in exchange for eternal life and a few grams of cocaine. Bowie, on the other hand, is a mug who has been a perennial fixture in a constantly evolving music scene, a shrewd, savvy and intelligent guy. ¿
What is their role here?
In my opinion they look like two young men in the throes of puberty waiting to ask two schoolmates to go to prom with them. They alternate that dark street space with their “cool” attitude which is quirky and awkward, that kind of innocence/casualty that just doesn’t fit in there.
What surprises me is that both of them, with their business acumen and so far unblemished careers, didn’t realise what they were publishing. Maybe it was a strategy to increase their audience, but in that case I don’t think it would be worth making such a ridiculous break in their careers.
1 Si tu boquita fuera de chocolate Pitbull
It is difficult to start with this position: all the richness of the Spanish language is not enough to vent the hatred I have for this song. A lousy and unbearable song from the time when Pitbull covered his own (and vomitous) songs and still managed to make them worse and more stinking.
Rehashing a rehash
In this case the track is a remix of his I know you want me, a work in which he desecrates the minor pentatonic scale with extremely basic ascending propulsions that sound like a pre-teen garage band song but with a marching facelift. In this second track the melodies are even more insipid and use narrower intervallic interludes (it seems that he is increasingly lazy to amass money and does less and less work on his self-plagiarised themes from previous works).
Those who know me know that I usually defend genres like reggaeton and try to fight against prejudice, but this is no longer a defence of any kind. When you make a song whose inventiveness is conspicuous – even more so than Pitbull’s little head – by its absence, and whose only motive is to be catchy… the logical thing is that it spreads but badly, like the plague.
This is the typical ugly track that sticks with you and you don’t like it at all, but it’s so simplistic that it gets stuck inside you. However, the instrumental is technically well done. The problem is the “showman” (because he’s not much of a singer).
Finally, the most embarrassing blog of my entire blogging career. …
I would like to know your opinion: What would be your top 10 most pathetic songs ever? Let me know in the comments.
Remember that you can buy a rap, trap, dembow, pop, r&b, dembow, reggaeton… instrumental! A la carte.
Here are some similar blogs: see you next week!
