Contra La Corriente Smells Like What I Had For Dinner
Overall Album Score: 7.5 out of 10 Do you know what this album makes me want to do? Go to my Mexican plantation in Cuba, seduce the sexiest local girl, and make s'mores. Ooooooh baby! And when I wake up in the morning, I would go before the Roman people and exclaim: "Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your oars!" And then me and her would row our boat (made out of part of a steel roof) and row over to the United States where we would find work. (I'm not sure why I believed that man when he said that all we needed to do to start a coffee plantation was to buy a can of Folgers whole bean coffee and throw them around the farm.) About Contra La Corriente by Marc Anthony, much is still the same in Marc Anthony Land. He's still coming up with album titles that sound so bizarre, he just HAD to have made up. "Contra La Corriente?" Weird! Also, he sings the album entirely in ill-begotten mumbo jumbo. I can't understand a word, because he doesn't use actual words. It makes me wonder "Whud up wit dis dude?" Okay, okay. Before I get Hillary Wrong-ham Clinton on my tale, I had better political-correctly tell you that he is actually speakingo a language called "Spanish." Even though Marc Anthony doesn't hail from a country entitled "Spain," he does come from a country that "Spain" had great influence upon. So, "Spain" made up a language and told everyone to speak it. Seriously, though! After his boring breakthrough, Todos a Su Tiempo, which had some mildly good songs and horrendously bad songs, he learns to scrap all the bad songs and releases an album completely full of mildly good songs. I marched into Contra La Corriente expecting to trash the bugger out of most these tracks, and I ended up not being able to trash a single one of them. Most of these tracks lie in the 8 and 8.5 category. One song got a 7.5 and another got a 6.5. (And a 6.5 doesn't mean that it is a bad song ... it just means that it isn't very good.) The final track of the album got a 9, because it has a good melody. The rest of the melodies range from feeble-to-decent. Like on Anthony's previous efforts, the main strength of the good songs are the arrangements and his singing voice. Both are strong and show talent. Nevertheless, his combination of salsa music and adult contemporary is getting really dull at this point. Practically every song on here has the same rhythm to it ... grrr ... If you can say one thing about Marc Anthony, it's that he's not very creative! ... Or at least he wasn't in 1997. I'll look forward to hearing his 1999 follow-up Marc Anthony, where he actually writes some of his own songs! (And he speakies dee Engleesh.) Up to this point in his career, he didn't pen a single note. Overall Album Score: 7.5 out of 10 (This album is lightly entertaining but very forgettable. All of these songs are nicely polished, however!) Average Song Score: 8.1 (Yyyyikes! I wouldn't have expected it! Marc Anthony conjures up a bunch of songs that are pretty much good throughout.) Album Tilt: 7.5 (This definitely isn't the world's most exciting album. However, it is very consistent and it's usually quite amusing. Nevertheless, when I listen to it, I don't really think it's good enough to score an overall 8. There nothing in here that strikes me as being bold.) Artist Rating: 7.0 (Marc Anthony remains an unambitious musician. These are just a bunch of calculated pop songs. And I say blah to that! However, they are also quite solid, too.) Track Reviews Y Hubo Alguien 8/10 Isn't there something written in the Holy Book of Salsa that states that salsa songs shouldn't be more than four minutes long? If there's not, then there should be! I don't bloody go into reviewing Marc Anthony tracks that are 6:28 minutes long! I think I might be being overly nice with this track score. But I can't deny that the song has a melody. Plus, with the presence of Anthony's soaring vocals and the energetic (and not cheesy whatsoever) instrumentation, the song manages to entertain. However, the song's "melody" isn't good enough to make this track anything more than minor amusement. Contra La Corriente 8/10 Crap! Who's the jerk who originally thought of joining salsa and adult contemporary? I hate both of these genres ... and when they're combined ... Oh that is risky! (Of course, I'm completely excluding everyone who likes either of these genres.) Oh! What am I complaining about? I'm being nice here! This song, while I don't care much for the style, I can't deny that the melody here is memorable. That said, it is pretty feeble. The other aspects of this song (the singing and the instrumentation) are all top-notch. The final third of this song should have been cut, however, because it gets a little bit drab there. Si Te Vas 8.5/10 Okay ... while this song isn't that remarkable, and it pretty much sounds the same as the previous two tracks, this one seems to be more focused and more boldly-put. But, it does lose a little bit of its stamina at its final third, again ... except I do like the last thirty seconds of it. Me Voy a Regalar 8.5/10 Marc Anthony is really smart and he's playing it safe! He wants HITS, baby. There's no room for innovation when you want to have HITS! Well, this guy is really succeeding. This is his fourth mildly enjoyable but solid-as-hell track. This one, however, makes me want to dance with maracas in my hands! I would have been about to give it a nine, but that chorus at the end of this one really sounds awful to me. No Me Conoces 8.5/10 Crap! I am just waiting to trash a Marc Anthony track, but it's just not happening! Grr! This is even a slow, love-profession-type song, but it's danged solid! (I don't really know what this songs about, because it's in another freaking language if you haven't figured that out.) 80 percent of the time in commercial albums, the slow song is almost obligatory. But this one is actually quite decent. Though, I must stress that it isn't perfect by any means. Nothing on this album seems to be penetrating the 9-mark, I'm sad to say. No Sabes Como Duele 7.5/10 Hah! HAH! This is the obligatory part of the record where they put feebler stuff in 'cause they want it buried. HAH! I BLOODY KNEW THAT IT WOULD HAPPEN! HAH! HAH!. But, apart from a lesser-overall enjoyable factor, the song is still well performed, well played, and the melodies still go strong. (Whose ever decision was it to add some of these rancid choruses at the end of these songs should be shot ... it would have sounded much better without them.) La Luna Sobre Nuestro Amor 6.5/10 Ooooooooooooooooooh crap. This one is much closer on the adult contemporary side ... and .......... Um. Ick? Every once in a while we get a sexy horn section (as usual) but even these sexy horns get kicked in the balls and become smooth easy listening horns. The melody here isn't particualrly solid. This is filler, relatively speaking. Suceden 8/10 We're still waltzing in the adult-contemporary dance floor, but this one starts out with some beautiful Latin-tinged acoustic guitar work. Marc Anthony starts singing really nice here and ... heck! It's quite lovely. This isn't salsa-esque, but it is still Latin-esque. That said, the melodic hooks here aren't strong enough to hold my interest beyond the first minute and a half. I still think it's rather feeble. But I think that about all these songs! (Except for the instrumentation ... that aspect of these songs are pretty darn coo.) Un Mal Sueno 9/10 Uuuuuuhn Maayl Suaaaaaaayno! Doesn't that mean "A Bad Dream?" I had a strange dream last night where I was in a crowd of people and we were watching a bunch of my friends getting into bizarre accidents (none of them got hurt, seemingly, but I remember one of them trying to go down a ladder that wasn't there ... the other "accidents" might take me awhile to describe) ... and at the end, it turned out to be an elaborate stage performance, and the script was written by another one of my friends. ANYWAY, as the last track of the album, Marc Anthony absolutely surprises me as he delivers the finest set of hooks on the album. This song also sounds a little bit 80s, but that's no reason to complain. Halo! Sprechen toi germaneo? E-Mailo mon bootay here-a. |
All reviews are copyrighted by Michael Lawrence. He does rich people's laundary for a living ... and HE LIKES IT!
