The Singles Jukebox

We say adiós to Tuesday with this teen heartthrob…

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[5.67]

Alfred Soto: This eighteen-year-old turns a mariacheño ballad with such deftness that it’s uncanny — I swore he was a couple years shy of the AARP set. I resisted the cryogenics. 
[5]

Will Adams: Sounding well beyond his years, Nodal wrings whatever heartbreak he can from a start-stop melody. I ended up liking that half-sung midsection, because the leaps really sounded like they meant something.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Leading off Fonovisa’s new Mexillennials comp is this slow stunner, sung by an 18-year-old with perhaps the biggest vocal range of his Mexican teen idol cohort. Perched between norteño accordion, mariachi horns, and a guitar rhythm I’ll forever hear as “Velvet Underground,” he’s warbling a purely pop composition — check out the minor iv chord and the repeated 16th-note hook that jumps from the chorus. But then, it’s hard to find 10 seconds of this song that don’t contain a hook. “Adiós Amor” unfolds into an endless three-minute series of baubles and trinkets, sparkles and flashes, soars and swoops. If “pop music” means anything, it’s this.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Nodal’s a decent singer, but I’d love to hear some more resonance, some more maturity in his voice; he’s awfully young (18!) and sounds like it. That said, I am totally down with his “mariacheño” hybrid of mariachi and norteño. The horns on this sound swanky.
[6]

Juana Giaimo: Christian Nodal may be a very young artist, but he doesn’t sound too innovative from traditional norteño music — at least for an ignorant ear like mine. The brass is too loud and his voice too affected, to the point that it’s almost unbearable to listen to his heartbroken weeps.
[4]

Adaora Ede: When I heard “Mexican teeny bopper,” I was expecting CNCO with a little more guitar, un poco de accordion and a Stetson (think Taylor when she was in that awkward middling stage between Speak Now and Red). What I got was a muted Ranchera ballad with bytes of pop in the belted chorus and there’s a something indecipherably pleasant about how norteno translates into distinct adolescent emotion here. Shimmy onward, valiant steed.
[6]