Thursday, November 30th, 2017

Luis Fonsi & Demi Lovato – Échame La Culpa

Despacito? Nope, never heard of it.


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[5.33]

Alex Clifton: The arrangement of this song completely washes out Demi Lovato’s vocals, which is weird because her voice is usually the strongest point of any song. Something feels like it’s missing here — the chorus comes and goes in the blink of an eye and isn’t strong enough to catch in your head, and Luis Fonsi, bless him, hasn’t struck gold the way he did with “Despacito.” I can already see this as “the failed follow-up” on an episode of Todd in the Shadows’ One-Hit Wonderland.
[4]

Alfred Soto: In its own way Fonsi’s performance surpasses what he pulled off in “Despacito,” and he’s got a singing partner ready to look him in the eye.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Should be a cynical attempt to replicate “Despacito”‘s chart position via tween star while ignoring the lackadaisical joke the tween star made of his contribution; should also be a saccharine bowdlerized attempt, the Latin version of Olly Murs’ “Up” Except that Lovato’s effervescent enough to sell the unsellable likes of “I don’t really really want to fight anymore,” animated enough to hold her own with Fonsi. 
[5]

Edward Okulicz: So much sunshine I don’t even believe they’ve broken up. The production, galloping down the street throwing thousand-mile wide smiles at everything in its path, swallows its singers and its own chorus whole, not even spitting out the bones. Any particular second of this song sounds like another, and the relentlessness is too much. Fonsi is about the third most prominent thing on his own song, which is odd to me. Also, Lovato’s English verses feel like interlopers.
[5]

Stephen Eisermann: A terrific, pulsing little ditty about two ex-lovers who care too much about each other to blame the other for the failure of their romantic relationship. It’s catchy, light-hearted, and Luis serves as a great counterpart to Demi’s belting. Honestly, the only thing wrong with the song is that there is an English portion at all — major props to Demi for the excellent Spanish verse.
[7]

Andy Hutchins: The deep, irredeemable awfulness of Demi’s “Hey, Fonsi!” being there as an cystic audio tag aside, this is a bouncy, light song for the first verse and first hook — Fonsi is clearly having even more fun than he did with “Despacito,” and Demi is singing in stunningly good Spanish for someone who has never really done that professionally. Then comes the second verse, which is so painfully an attempt to write the most universal English verse possible that it comes off as Great Value songwriting, saps all the fun of the track, and ruins the illusion that this isn’t just a “Despacito” riff knocked out rapidamente with the biggest name who would agree to try a little harder in the studio on the Spanish verse than Bieber did. That no one heard this and thought “Demi’s verse is gonna sound utterly incongruous with the first to most white folks” is odd. That no one heard Demi’s verse, stapled on to an otherwise uncannily effervescent song about choosing to lay arms down and lie down in arms, and scrapped the idea entirely? That’s a massive misread of the rise of pop in Spanish — it’s because of the hispanohablantes in the first fucking place, stupid.
[5]

Reader average: [3.33] (3 votes)

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