Saturday Flashback: Daddy Yankee & Snow – Con Calma

“I’m willing to bet most of Britain hasn’t heard it.”

Tom: I’m not sending this to you because I think it’s a good track. Despite it being staggeringly popular in the Spanish-speaking world — over 1.4 billion views on YouTube — it only peaked at 66 in the UK charts. I’m willing to bet most of Britain hasn’t heard it.

Tim: Well, the title doesn’t ring a bell for me, so…

Tom: Or at least, most of Britain hasn’t heard this version.

Tim: Oh. That’s…I don’t…just…um.

Tom: Daddy Yankee, you’ll know from Despacito. And Snow? Well, it turns out he was the guy who did Informer. They just went back to him with new lyrics and asked if he wanted to be on the track. I suspect he’ll be very happy with the result.

Tim: Yeah, I can imagine – half an hour in front of the microphone, a whole lot of money coming in later.

Tom: Oh, and it turns out that neither of your stars can’t be bothered to do a music video, you can just replace them with a) a giant ugly CGI head and b) someone who looks vaguely like a younger version of them, and everyone’ll be fine with it. Sure.

Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee – Despacito

“A tad spoiled by Daddy Yankee doing the school register”

Tim: It’s been out a few weeks already, and is already phenomenally successful, but I made a discovery the other day that surprised me. Let’s listen to it first, though – here’s the Bieber-less original.

Tom: Blimey, they filmed in La Perla and made it look beautiful. I mean, it is beautiful, but let’s hope tourists don’t get confused.

Tim: A decent song, nice summer dance track that’ll take over the world, albeit a tad spoiled by Daddy Yankee doing the school register at the beginning and shouting all over the place in the middle.

Tom: You may enjoy this school register. Anyway, yes, the music.

Tim: Haha, I do like that as it happens. But yes, it’ll do – got me excited and dancing around in a bar late last Saturday night anyway, which is a good sign. But, as alluded to earlier, there are multiple versions of this. The standard we have here, the one with Justin Bieber singing some of the lyrics in English.

Tom: Which, let’s be honest, is the only reason the UK’s heard of this at all. Which is a shame, because this is a pretty good latin-pop track, albeit indistinguishable from many others for us dullards who don’t speak Spanish. What else was there?

Tim: An urban version, a god awful dance reworking by Major Lazer, and, most interesting for me, a ‘Versión Pop‘, which is the same as this but with Daddy Yankee removed. Perfect, I thought, I’ll have that. Except: it’s a bit dull. It drags, it’s uninteresting. Somehow, despite making a part of it vaguely unlistenable, Daddy Yankee (can’t believe I’ve typed that name four times now) actually saves it. Who’d have thought it?

Tom: Whoever called in Justin Bieber, apparently.