Switched on Pop
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The arrival of summer months typically occasions some shake-ups on the charts.
Since 2021s Botella Tras Botella by Gera MX and Christian Nodal, which peaked at No.
1), Flowers by Miley Cyrus is still no.
(Looking at you,Miguel).
Twelve songs on the Hot 100 right now are Mexican regional.
Anamaria Sayre:Sure, start me off with a hard question.
So, some people would call it a genre.
But what is itreally?
A marketing term used by U.S. labels and execs who didnt know what to do with the music.
It encompassesnorteno, it encompassesbanda, it encompassescorridos.
These are genres that have lived in the northern part of Mexico for a long time.
I think people are now becoming more aware of the differences, but its basically a bucket term.
Charlie Harding:Ana, you call it a catchall term.
Is it also like a radio format?
A way of packaging different music into one kind of airplay?
AS:Yeah, exactly.
Youll also hear people refer to it in different ways depending on where you are in the United States.
12-string guitars are pretty characteristic, and these vocal harmonies that come in when you have a larger group.
One thing Ill add is that the lyricism is generally really strong.
Theres always a lot of storytelling involved.
Stories of the heart.
So thats a key piece of this genre.
RC:There are a bunch of different subgenres inside the umbrella term of Mexican regional.
Can you break a couple of those down?
AS:Yeah, theres a lot.
RC:The matching suits.
AS:If you heard it, you would know it.
Thats kind of the bigger sound.
You haveSierreno, which is more stripped-down guitar based.
If you know the artistDannyLux, hes doing a lot of that lately.
You have Norteno, which is very ballady, but also has a kind ofCumbiasound to it.
So theres really a huge variety.
And a lot of it, again, is tied to specific states within Mexico.
And its been interesting to see the way different streaming platforms and things are responding.
Apple has a huge playlist that they named Musica Mexicana.
Like, they just called it Mexican music.
And its like, Mexican music is extremely vast.
And this is just one piece of one piece of one piece.
So yeah, thats an even more inaccurate umbrella term.
Dont even get me started on theChilango music scene.
Thats a whole other thing.
On the radio and on the charts, what is driving this push?
You have a whole generation of really young Latinos in the U.S. who are listening to this music.
And thats why were seeing such an enormous build.
Its about whats happening here in this country and the way that its bringing Mexico to the world.
4 on the charts.
Its called Ella Baila Sola, and its a collaboration between Peso Pluma and another group called Eslabon Armado.
Ana, right off the bat, what genre would you put this under?
.Ella Baila Sola, Eslabon Armado & Peso Pluma
.
AS:This very comfortably lies within the bucket of corridos tumbados.
Corridos has always been kind of an older genre, something your grandparents listen to.
More melodic, a little ballady.
We dont have any electronics.
There is no 808 bass.
It doesnt even have a chorus or any sort of real repetition in the lyrics.
It is clearly extremely narrative.
The only thing that I hear thats contemporary is the production.
Its very in your face: its bright, its aggressive.
Its in its own lane.
AS:A hundred percent.
She almost had to popify to make her music interesting to people.
And theres none of that in this music.
RC:She even had a song called Techno Cumbia like, its right in the name.
Shes bridging those culture gaps.
And I dont find it particularly attractive to listen to, but it somehow works.
AS:Chalino Sanchezwas one of the most widely belovedNarcocorridoartists.
And his voice was famously kind of grating.
Thats part of the roughness of it.
If youre telling stories of the heart, youre sometimes telling stories of heartbreak.
I mean, this is a genre that is heart-wrenching, and its matched oftentimes by imperfect vocals.
You just want to be as loud and as intense and as emotional as possible.
Sometimes its more imperfect voices that are the best ones to communicate that.
A lot of the sound is in the nasal cavity.
Theres so much instrumentation filling up so much space.
If you want to be heard, you gotta break through.
AS:It has to be a voice that you cant not listen to.
You cant look away.
RC:Peso Pluma and Eslabon Armado linked up for the first time to make Ella Baila Sola.
What is the significance of them and their collaboration, Ana?
AS:Peso Pluma is blowing up.
He started making music a year ago, and its been a wild ride for him.
Hes from Guadalajara, which is not a city in northern Mexico, where this music usually comes from.
He went to high school in San Antonio, Texas, and is half Lebanese.
Its important to look at this phenomenon as something that is Mexican-American in many ways.
For him to have that time in Texas makes sense.
Eslabon Armado, theyre a band from Patterson, California.
So in a similar way, theyre a Mexican American group of kids bringing this music to the world.
They started a couple years earlier, but both of these artists are really young.
Thats something thats really characteristic of whats happening with this explosion.
Everyone whos participating is super-young.
CH:And theyre bridge builders between cultures.
RC:I mean, it has demonstrated success.
Peso Pluma haseightsongs on the Hot 100 right now.
Thats a number reserved for the Taylor Swifts of the world, the Rihannas of the world.
AS:You have to understand, in Mexico, Peso Pluma is like Beyonce level.
He is superstar-celebrity status.
.un x100to, Bad Bunny & Grupo Frontera
CH:Different vibe.
RC:This track peaked at five on the Hot 100.
Charlie, what do you think?
This is him collaborating with Grupo Frontera, which is another Mexican American band.
Theyre coming to us out of Texas.
And this song is Norteno, with maybe like a Cumbia-light mix to it.
Its something thats kind of a straight-ahead Tejano Cumbia, if anything.
Very characteristic of the southern part of Texas and the music thats come out of there Selena included.
CH:Im hearing the accordion, you have thecha cha chacumbia rhythm.
But yeah, the sort of slower ballad kind of thing.
The ballad piece of it is key to any Norteno.
Its also something that you get with a song like this that does have some of that cumbia feel.
Karol G had a regional track on her recent album.
However, of all the things that you could do, Nortenos dont really move.
Like we said, theyre ballads.
But its something that has become one of the most pervasive Latin American sounds.
You have your Mexican Cumbia, the Caribbean, Central America … Cumbia is all over the map.
The influence is present in much of Latin music because of how pervasive the genre is.
So it does make sense.
I would say theres a bridge there for sure.
An interesting factoid about the Cumbia rhythm: Its a dance rhythm, right?
Like, basically its like this step back and forth.
Thats the origin and its what keeps it that tight.
Thats pretty different from a lot of the other beats youll hear coming out of the north of Mexico.
Right off the bat we have a reverberated vocal and a simple stripped-back guitar intro.
It feels at home in the world of other charting, more ballad-y pop songs.
CH:And when Bad Bunny comes in, the song flips and becomes super-contemporary.
The other thing worth noting is thematically how contemporary it is.
What gets more contemporary than that?
Theyre not just modernizing the sound, but theyre modernizing the subject matter.
They have this very 2020s sensibility in the melody.
RC:All right, lets keep going down the charts.
Peaking at 35 we have TQM by Fuerza Regida.
Ana, what would you consider this?
AS:Im gonna go once again with corrido tumbado.
This has all of those characteristic sounds that we talked about earlier with Ella Baila Sola.
You have that trumpet sound.
You have the 12-string guitars in there.
Its just a thing everyone does.
Its how Mexicans like to listen to their music.
CH:Its pop music.
And its about the lyricism too.
And when youre talking about corridos mashed with a hip-hop tone, theyre not in the traditional banda garb.
Theyre rocking designers and they want everyone to know it.
And thats characteristic of the music.
I love these guys.
The thing that is amazing to me is that these songs work super-produced and they work superstripped down.
It holds up 100 percent.
The way these songs move, the way the melodies are written, theyre so strong.
It doesnt really matter how much production you have on it, it still works.
CH:That usually is what defines a great song.
When you strip it down to just its bare bones, does it still hold together?
And this definitely does.
And I am transported back two decades.
RC:Theyre the same concept you know, Cupid … Lovefool …
It all boils down to those elements of love and heartbreak.
AS:Breaking to that rap verse is giving me very 2012 pop-song energy.
You have your bumpy chorus and then youre like, All right, lets break it down.
RC:Most K-pop groups have a rapper that pops in and delivers a verse, but I agree.
This whole song feels very 2012.
RC:Cupid is currently at 23 after peaking at No.
17, and it blew up originally on TikTok because of the sped-up version.
It reminds me of listening to SOPHIEs Lemonade.
It has that really high-pitch, ridiculous vocal.
Thats not even a sped-up version, thats the original version.
AS:The golden era.
RC:Its crazy.
Its corny and its silly and it lends itself to people making content.
CH:Content music.
That is a sad phenomenon.
AS:Is it Charlie?
CH:Im a purist.
Im not sure, Ill think about it.
Im going into a subterranean, crystalline giant open space and everything is slow and reverberated.
This is the polar opposite of what we just heard, but is this also a TikTok thing?
RC:Let me drop some Lana Lore on you real quick.
So, the song is currently at No.
90 and debuted at No.
54, and it has perhaps one of the weirdest charting journeys.
The song was originally recorded during sessions for Lanas albumUltraviolence, which came out in 2014.
Say Yes to Heaven first had snippets leaked in 2016.
Then in 2020 the full track leaked online.
AS:Officially sped up.
Lana isnt a stranger to sped-up songs we talked about that on the sped-up episode.
Her song Summertime Sadness had a big sped-up push.
CH:Takes you out of the cave, puts you on dry land.
RC:I really like this song.
It would be easy to translate that buzz into official releases.
Even in the hip-hop world, that happens all the time.
Lil Yachty did it with Poland last year.
CH:Bob Dylan has made an entire career off of releasing the unreleased material.
But this is unique to me, the fan communitys bullying.
CH:Yeah, do we want this?
2: the remix of Taylor Swifts Karma with Bronx-based rapper Ice Spice.
.Karma, Taylor Swift feat.
Similarly, Ice Spice has had a lot of chart success recently, being on Boys a Liar Pt.
2 with Pink Pantheress, which peaked at No.
AS:A good niche to occupy.
1 collaborator on every pop song.
Ice Spice seems to be filling that role.
AS:Honestly, I dont get it.
And so it makes sense to me.
But overall, I dont think it did the song a lot of favors.
Karma was already so full.
Like Reanna said, the production is this very glitzy experience and I dont think it needed it.
And often what is done is like, they dont even change the production.
Its the exact same timestamp.
The song is equally as long and they just put in a new vocal.
I hate that approach.
It just feels like phoning it in.
They at least changed up the production to create space for Ice Spice.
That said, this is definitely not the mashup that I was looking for.
Its the part of pop music that is the sort of most yuck.
RC:Yeah, I dont think anybody was particularly asking for this.
AS:Someone in A&R is very pleased with themselves right now, though.
CH:We heard songs earlier that lacked repetition in their lyrics.
Here Taylor Swift is partially winning us over with the sheer repetition of the karma line.
Antihero is at No.
11, somehow still netting gains after 32 weeks on the chart.
Hits Different is at 27, which is aMidnightsbonus track.
Snow on the Beach is at No.
30.Cruel Summer, off ofLover, is at No.
45, where it reentered last week for the first time since 2019.
RC:Lots of Taylor on the chart.
Do you think there will be more of a Mexican presence on the charts from here on out?
Or do you think its just kind of a momentary quote-unquote fad in America?
Its a good question.
It has been really the center for centuries.
So if anything, thats maybe whats here to stay: a shift toward there.
But is regional specifically going to persist as a global phenomenon?
Only time will tell.
CH:You know, Ive learned today that if fans want something, they can make it happen.
Go bully your favorite artists to create what you want.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Heres playlist of tracks discussed in this Chartbreakers.
Be sure to check outSwitched on Popwherever you get your podcasts.
