KWISP #16: Songs I Heard in Ubers in Puerto Rico
Bad Bunny. Karol G. Daddy Yankee. Canciones sin lecciones, solo vibes.
The best way I’ve managed to learn something has always been through song. Schoolhouse Rock melodies about grammar rules and the branches of government lay dormant in my head to this day. I didn’t truly understand Shakespeare until my high school friends and I wrote pop song parodies about the themes for a class assignment.
And no song has stuck quite in my head since the day my Spanish professor played Marc Anthony’s (who I knew primarily as J. Lo’s pre-Affleck husband) “Vivir Mi Vida” during my first few months of college.
“Voy a reir/ Voy a bailar/ Vivir mi vida/ la la la la.” A pop hook in a simplicity that transcends language. Isn’t the ethos of the party song “Laugh, dance, live?” (Is it more or less cringe to hang those words on a sign in my bathroom if they’re in English or Spanish?)
That was my introduction. But when I started getting more and more into Spanish-language pop and dance music, I didn’t do it because I wanted to learn more Spanish. Or, really, about anything. I did it because as a fan of pop music writ large, who am I to avoid some of the best stuff because I’m an English-speaker? I mean, Rosalia’s been consistently releasing some of the greatest statements of pop girliedom in the last ten years. And if Bad Bunny’s going to be a global superstar, who am I to not assume my role as a global citizen?
The streaming model of popular music consumption has its flaws— it doesn’t fairly compensate artists, and it’s arguably made our attention spans (and pop songs themselves) shorter. But it’s also fully democratized music all across the globe. It’s no longer up to radio programmers and DJs to decide what we get to hear. In the midwestern United States, I know people whose primary listenership is to K-Pop. An Afrobeats banger like Tyla’s “Water” can coexist on playlists with Drake and Post Malone. On my beloved year-end lists, Pitchfork consistently ranks Rosalia above singles by the National. And those Pitchforky bitches LOVE the National!!
As a coworker pointed out to me, I could probably go to a club in Chicago and dance to Bad Bunny. But I really, really wanted to do it in his home country of Puerto Rico. But my dear boyfriend and I were so drained from our daytime exploring each night that circling back to a club was not in the cards for us.
Luckily, there was one young Uber driver— clad in street style, uninterested to make conversation with us— whose car tunes helped us feel the pulse of modern Puerto Rico. This is his playlist. As well as that of a few other drivers who showed us around, whose songs stuck in our heads and hearts and made me redownload Shazam. (Rude of him to not have the little screen that shows artists and names.)
HERE’S THE PLAYLIST:
LISTEN TO THIS PLAYLIST WHILE YOU:
Listen to the call of the green owl and finally restart Spanish on DuoLingo
Roll your windows down just a bit the second it gets above fifty degrees
Loosen up your hips after you’ve been sitting down for way way too long
THE MOST “THIS PLAYLIST” SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
My gringa is about to show, so bear with me. Do you remember the sheer cultural force that was “Despacito” in 2017? It wasn’t just that, now that his Beliebers were young adults with economic power, anything Justin Bieber touched turned to gold in 2017. It was that, in the mysterious-sexy-sensitive-boy pop landscape dominated by Drake and Ed Sheeran, absolutely nobody could deliver that ethos better and more truthfully than Luis Fonsi. And therefore the current wave of Latin crossover pop was ushered in. Hearing this one in Puerto Rico has to be
THIS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT BELONGS HERE BUT I PROMISE IT DOES:
Okay, you caught me. I did not hear one of these songs in an Uber in Puerto Rico. I heard the remix of Dua Lipa’s “Physical” in a Marshall’s department store in Plaza de Armas in Old San Juan. I actually heard a lot of cuts from Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” album during our visit there. Did US radio give that perfect pop album the lasting credit it deserves? Perhaps we could learn a thing or two.
THE TRUE STAR OF THIS PLAYLIST:
In retrospect, going to Puerto Rico and expecting to hear a lot of Bad Bunny feels kind of like asking an everyday Englishman if they know the queen. But I wasn’t disappointed. It was in a tourist shop in Old San Juan that I bought a sticker of the cover art from his Grammy-nominated smash Un Verano Sin Ti, which I had just found out was adapted from Puerto Rico tourist merch! So in a way, my expectations weren’t TOTALLY off-base. (Te amo, Benito. Si no fuera por mi novio, te desearía en inglés.)
MY PERSONAL FAVORITE SONG ON THIS PLAYLIST:
Let me for one second speak to the extensive bumping I’ve done of “Colmillo,” a jam-packed collab song from Puerto Rican superproducer Tainy. But mostly let me speak to the opening verse and chorus shared (word for word!!) by Latin crossover star (and Bad Bunny’s frequent collaborator) J Balvin and rapper/rising star Young Miko. Young Miko (a lesbian) starts the song with a few bars about typical Latin rap stuff (pursuing a woman, her butt growing larger), and then after sharing the chorus J Balvin raps THE SAME BARS. (Not to mention the beat is rad as fuck and sounds like you’re in space.)
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s very cool to see some of the same conversations we’re having in Western culture happening in Latin culture over some sick production. (Later on, you’ll even hear Jowell y Randy say a vulgar authority-defiant phrase in English!) Man, I really didn’t want this article’s sentiment to be “music brings us all together.” So reductive. Instead, I’ll end it with this: estoy enamorada de Young Miko y si no fuera por mi novio, te desearía en inglés.
Gracias por leer! Si disfrutaste, debería
Y si quieres leer más, debería
Now you know what it was like to be the Uber drivers I talked to in Puerto Rico who immediately started speaking English to me when they saw a white woman with a face like the moon. Adios!