The Singles Jukebox

And we close our day celebrating the rebirth of Jesus and Lady Gaga turning 30 with ACCORDIONS AND TUBAS, hell yes!

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[5.50]

Cassy Gress: The polish is a bit heavy, but you know what? This song is so amiable and summery that I don’t care.
[7]

Juana Giaimo: Latin youth may know Carlos Vives because of Wisin’s “Nota de amor” but he won’t remain in their consciousnesses if he continues to release such generic singles like this one. In his defense, Wisin’s song wasn’t good either. 
[5]

Jer Fairall: Spry and more than just a little bit pretty, this is at its liveliest when the players are allowed to go all out during the chorus. I just wish I found the vocal, perfectly pleasant as it is, to be as engaging as the melody and the instrumentation. 
[6]

Iain Mew: I start feeling like I’m meant to be gently uplifted by scenes I’ve just watched while the sun sets and the credits roll. It’s not an unpleasant feeling out of context, but it does mean that the song’s switch from twinkly to shouting joy in my face comes as a worse shock than it might have.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Classic-rock vallenato, borrowing U2’s sweeping, non-specific inspiro-soar for a tune that could fit at home equally well in the mouths of Alan Jackson or Juan Luis Guerra. Accordion flourishes and a tuba solo prevent it from being utterly generic. 
[5]

Will Adams: The intro is like mainlining Sunny D, but as more instruments enter the arrangement builds into a satisfying jangle akin to — and pardon the left field comparison — Avril Lavigne’s “My World.” Carlos Vives doesn’t have the voice to match the brightness and strains to only reach halfway.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Great interplay: even when the spectrum threatens to puncture, you have faith the band will negotiate a settlement. Vives bellows his heart out, and the arrangement is here to cheer him up: by force, if necessary.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The transition from acoustic to full band was rough going at first, but it works despite the Colombian singer’s okay vocal. The fulsome interaction of shakers, horns, fiddle, and rhythm lick is fetching enough.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: A pop-rock ode to the joy of re-finding an old love, complete with a tuba bridge. Vives’s ever-soaring vocals sell it. 
[6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: You can accuse Carlos Vives of doing basically the same thing for 20 years now, but it’s impossible to deny the efectiveness of his formula (He’s extremely influential to generations of Colombian artists). “Las Cosas de la Vida” contains all the elements that make his music great — pop-rock that somehow remains faithful to the structure and flavour of Vallenato — but, despite the always awesome accordion lines and the pleasant guitar work, it’s becoming increasingly harder for him to update his sound. It still feels like every other single in his career (and it definitely falls short compared to his classics), but the horn solo, and chord changes that came with it, indicate that progress is on the way. I wanted this song to go somewhere else after that. 
[5]