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“Despacito” doesn’t sound like the music that’s been popular over the past couple of years.
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And to some, its popularity and crossover appeal have even become a political message of defiance against the status quo and the summer of 2017. It’s a reflection of its culture, and the appreciation it can bring to that culture.
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“Despacito” now occupies a special place in recorded musical history. Audiences seem to be craving something that’s different from what they’ve been hearing, yet still familiar, and “Despacito” offers that.īut the song also represents something you can’t find in the notes and melodies and lyrics. On a technical level, we can look at its chord progressions and melody and identify a few reasons why the song is so beloved. “Despacito” appeals to each one of us in its own way, and that’s the greatest thing about it. To have a whole country singing along and connecting to a song that so many of us don’t know the words to is a feat. But it’s become much more than the song of summer 2017, more than the results of what happens when human voice is stretched on top of music, more than a beat that sits at your hips and a melody that hits you in your chest. “Despacito” is equal parts heartbeat, heat, sweat, and skin, making it perfect for summer.
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1 in America - the first since 1996’s “Macarena,” and before that, Los Lobos's 1987 cover of “La Bamba.” And now it’s tied with a handful of other songs for the title of second-longest-leading Billboard Hot 100 No. It’s only the third Spanish-language song in history to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, where it has remained for the past 16 weeks - tying Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men for the most weeks at the top of the chart. The remix, which features Justin Bieber, came out in April - and the two versions of the song combined have earned “Despacito” the distinction of “most streamed song in history.” The original song and its music video were released in January the video has since become the most watched YouTube video of all time, with more than 3 billion views. He explained that the song’s popularity spans a wide range of listening categories, including Top 40, Adult Contemporary, and Spanish Contemporary: “If you look at what we call total audience spins or total impressions, ‘Despacito’ has 1.8 billion total audience spins. It’s sort of unprecedented to have a song do so well in so many formats simultaneously,” Tom Poleman, the chief programming officer of iHeartRadio, told Vox. You couldn’t avoid the song if you tried. “Despacito” is inescapable and inevitable. The sweltering pop reggaeton-love ballad hybrid has been everywhere this summer, playing in cities and suburbs, at house parties and barbecues, at wedding receptions and department stores, in people’s headphones during their commute. And then we realized that we’d run out of pop stations before going 10 minutes without hearing “Despacito.” Having just heard the song, we tried another station. When the song ended and the station went to commercial, we switched to another station, and within minutes the falling melody of the cuatro came on again. On the way home from the beach last weekend, as we got into the car and turned on the radio, I immediately heard the familiar plucks of the cuatro, a steel-strung Puerto Rican guitar, on Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber’s “Despacito” remix.