
You'd have to be living under a rock to have not heard the Latin pop hit "
Despacito". The song by Luis Fonsi Ft. Daddy Yankee dominated the Latin pop charts for the majority of 2017 and reached the top of American and European charts not long after. Though
Despactio's mainstream success was largely thanks to one Justin Bieber covering the song. Nevertheless, on the 5/08/2017,
Despactio became the most viewed video in YouTube history, reaching over 3 billion views. This undoubtedly makes
Despacito one of the biggest songs of 2017, and possibly even the decade. It has marked the way for more Latin music to come through into the mainstream music scene, which could possibly be a major turning point in music history and I definitely think we will begin to see more diversity in mainstream music because of songs like
Despacito.
However, mainstream music isn't completely ready to become bilingual and multicultural. For example, "
SUBEME LA RADIO" by Enrique Iglesias also dominated Latin charts for the early part of 2017, but it took up until the later half of the year to gain mainstream success. Further more, this mainstream success only came when rapper Sean Paul covered the track and the first two verses were translated to English. Personally, I think the original version is far better than the Sean Paul cover (no disrespect).
I'm glad that mainstream music is evolving to incorporate different cultures, genres and languages but it's clear that there is still a long way to go.
What do you think?
Comments
Post a Comment