oneweekoneband:

Things that have been said about Shakira:

The female Ricky Martin. -everybody, about her crossover

Laundry Service, is the ultimate in crossover nightmares. Its wan ska-pop, faux-country ballads, and generic rock barely betray a Spanish accent or any musical heritage. -David Browne, Entertainment Weekly

You are actually authentically talented. You are a songwriter above all else, rare for a woman in Latin music, or really anywhere. -Matt Cibula, Pop Matters

If there is a market for music for tapas bars with sexually frustrated customers, Shakira has it cornered. -Dave Simpson, The Guardian

Mariah Carey after a quarter-bottle of tequila and a weekend lost in the rainforest. -Mike Diver, BBC

A combination of Latin licentiousness and English self-taught via Bob Dylan lyrics and a thesaurus means you’re never quite sure the Colombian singer knows what she’s saying. -Johnny Davis, The Guardian

The following couple of paragraphs would require a book’s worth of elaboration to really be worth saying, but briefly, the default US (and often other Anglophone) assumption about Latin music is that it’s either authentic and poor (and therefore too foreign) or middle-class and imitative of US/Euro norms (and therefore not as good as the real thing). That Latin music could be authentically middle-class (i.e. pop) is at odds with the inane but widespread (US) understanding of the global population being divided into First World and Third World.

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Shorter version: it bothers the fuck out of me that American and British pop nerds as a group (always plenty of exceptions) have lots of time for Scandinavian pop music, and are learning to have time for East Asian pop music, but have little to no time for Latin pop music, and I can’t help seeing a complex web of race, class, and global-culture biases as a major contributing factor.

A post well worth your time, especially if you consider yourself a committed pop music fan.