Tag: Ricky Martin

Ricky Martin feat. Wendy – Vente Pa’ Ca

“How does Ricky Martin just not age?”

Tom: There’s been a dearth of good music lately. I was looking through recent releases, idly clicked on this, and then spent four minutes about to click away… but then sticking around. It’s… not… bad?

Tim: How does Ricky Martin just not age? I mean I know that shot’s probably been Photoshopped to heck, but he’s like Puerto Rica’s answer to Magnus Carlsson.

Tom: Sure, it doesn’t need to be four minutes. Sure, it’s middle-of-the-road and not a particularly great song. But what’s interesting to me is how it’s mixed together what you’d expect from Ricky Martin, and what you expect from a modern pop track.

Tim: That’s true – the intro got me thinking “yep, it’s Ricky Martin”, and then the vocals sections hit and it’s usual modern pop. Fairly bland modern pop, unfortunately, but still.

Tom: Most of the melody and the instrumentation could have come out of the early 2000s. But the song structure is modern: a pre-chorus vocal line, and a chorus that’s just an instrumental synth.

And hey, at least it doesn’t repeat to fade.

Tim: No – good ending, I’ll certainly give it that.

Ricky Martin – Vida

“Strumming guitars! Summery drums! Actual foreign!”

Tim: Football!

Tom: Really?

Tim: I know, sorry. But you’ll forgive me once you hear this, a track off the official album of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Tom: I think my first reaction is “crikey, Ricky Martin’s still going”.

Tim: Oh yes – 42 and he’s still got all of it. Strumming guitars! Summery drums! Actual foreign!

Tom: “Actual foreign”? Let’s not forget that Livin’ La Vida Loca came in two versions, complete with near-identical videos.

Tim: What a partying, beachy, summery track this is, and the video makes it abundantly clear that that is precisely what it’s meant to be.

Tom: Yep. It’s basically the last World Cup song, “This Time For Africa“, only filtered through a Latin American lens.

Tim: What with it being his second turn at doing an official World Cup song, it’s hard not to compare it to The Cup of Life, and I think it stands up very well indeed. A great track, for a competition I would otherwise do my best to avoid.

Tom: It’s not my cup of tea, but it’s good to know that they’re following the true meaning of modern sport: product placement.

Tim: Right – who’d have thought that Sony makes a phone that’s waterproof?

Ricky Martin – Más

Ooh, like it a LOT.

Tom: My opening sentence was originally going to be: “I expect to see an English version of this out in a couple of months, probably with a harder beat behind it.”

Tim: Ooh, like it a LOT.

Tom: Turns out that Ricky Martin’s management are way ahead of me, and “Freak of Nature” will be out pretty damn soon.

Tim: Still good, but to be honest I wasn’t really listening to the words – just the general sound of it. Probably because I was still in a ‘this is foreign’ frame of mind.

Tom: I still prefer the original, though. It’s got a great shoutalong chorus (“más” means “more”), whereas the English chorus of ‘fun fun fun’ is a bit too Beach Boys-esque to really work in this track. It’s bloody good, quite frankly.

Tim: It is, it really is, although after about three and half minutes I was ready for an ending. And not in my usual ‘I’m bored’ way, but in a ‘this is dragging a bit’ way.

Tom: Somehow, it manages to still sound like Ricky Martin while still being a modern pop song: for someone who most of the world still associates with Livin’ La Vida Loca, that’s not a bad feat.

I have to ask, though – what’s going on with the lopsided half-shaven hairstyle?

Tim: Well, I saw that and immediately thought prison. It’s probably not that, though.