Hey, do you like accordions and durable crossover hits? Turns out we do.

[Video][Website]
[7.22]

Jonathan Bogart: Feels weird to be blurbing this after it’s been ruling Latin airwaves for a solid year, but if ustedes gringos are just catching up to it now, I guess I can’t begrudge you the party. So yes, this is 2010’s big kuduro crossover, Angola via Portugal via Puerto Rico, with a beachy reggaetón bump and a nagging synth-accordion hook and a chorus that, in the great crossover-dance tradition, is an instruction manual on how to dance it. Not that you have to do anything but shake your ass and holler along; if this is unlikely to replace the Macarena at dance-impaired weddings, it’s because it’s too much actual fun.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Some savagely catchy accordion work here but there’s a curious lack of bite to the rest of it. Doubled beats move the feet and quicken the pulse but otherwise the rhythm is stilted and the vocals are just kind of there. I don’t mind being told how to dance, but I’d like to be forced onto the floor first.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: “Danza Kuduro” is a lot smoother than the kuduro I fell in love with a few years back — abrasive rave music by Buraka Som Sistema that wasn’t inaccessible per se, but wasn’t really Top 40 material. In retrospect, though, it seems obvious that South American dance music was overdue and particularly well-suited for another international crossover in 2011. The BPM is in line with most of the hip house that’s overtaken the charts, the accordion and violin lines are easily replaced with synthesizers and the vocals can be digitally manipulated. The end result is a song that smoothly fits into contemporary club soundtracks, but whose rhythms and energy remain distinctly of its context.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: I’m sorry, I’m too busy dancing to write anything useful here, other than to just note that I’m shocked that it’s taken over a year for this song to blow up outside of the Latin pop universe. (Or jeez, 18 months if you go back to the original release of “Vem dançar kuduro.”) If nothing else, you kind of can’t get a better testament to this track’s longevity, huh? Unstoppable
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Five dozen global dance hits corralled like atoms into a room so tiny they’ve only got room to pulse up and down on their tiptoes. Which is movement, just not the kind I suspect was wanted.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: The accordion is what most makes this stand out. Well, that and the “oy-yoy-yoy”s. And the parts where the rhythm doubles. That said, it still strikes me as kind of generic — I just can’t say to which genre, exactly. So good chance I’m wrong.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: I’m all in favor of improving relations between Spanish and Portuguese-speaking ex-colonists and always a sucker when it comes to an international collabo so relentlessly bouncy. This is decent fire, so I guess, well done, but give us more fire next time. To reiterate: next time, MORE FIRE!
[5]

Isabel Cole: There are things here I could point to that I like — well-used AutoTune turning the right number of scoops into grace notes without sucking the personality out of energetic singing; a male vocal in pop music I actually actively like for once (limited experience suggests it’s not quite a coincidence I’m finding this in a Spanish-language song, but I’m not versed enough in either pop world to make a definitive statement), by performers who sound like they’re having a blast singing it; enticing hooks and a sexy-ass beat — but really what it comes down to is that I refuse to say mean things about anything that makes me want this pressingly to get up and dance my ass off despite the fact that I dance about as gracefully as… well: you see the dudes in the video? That is about to be me, minus the boat.
[10]

Michelle Myers: Turns out Lucenzo’s “Vem Dancar Kuduro” would have been better had there been some reggaeton verses added.
[7]