Juanes Goes Electronica with “La Luz”

For his new single “La Luz”, Colombian pop-rock star Juanes chose to add a twist of electronica and folk to his pop-rock style.

It’s almost ironic and perhaps that’s why Juanes chose to add a bit of electronica. “La Luz” is a song with a sexy theme framed in the fact that the power went out in the neighborhood. Not only electronica music is riding a big popularity wave, but it also blends well with almost everything, and some pop-rock and Cumbia are not the exception.

This combination gives Juanes’ “La Luz” a high energy beat that backs lyrics of kiss-seeking pledges made by the song’s protagonist.

However, I learned from Juanes’ “P.A.R.C.E.” that it would be a mistake to assume the rest of the upcoming album will have this style. The 1st single of “P.A.R.C.E.” which was Juanes previous studio release, was “Yerbatero”, which also had this fast beat, high energy song with simplistic lyrics that is the dream of club and radio DJs. Yet “P.A.R.C.E.” as a whole, did not follow the style of “Yerbatero”.

I wasn’t very impressed with “La Luz”, and what little I did like about it was more for its innovation than for its musicality. I don’t seem to be alone on this assessment as “La Luz” has been 3 weeks in the Billboard charts and is currently in #24 on the Hot Latin Songs list, peaking at #22 (which not that impressive for a Latin super star like Juanes).

Yet, I’m one that likes when artists sometimes get out of the beaten path and try new things. I like when artists are not afraid to occasionally put aside the commercially predictable success formula, and experiment with new art forms. This could be done by including one or a few songs in an album that are musically different than the artists previous style, or sometimes it would be an entire album. Ruben Blades did it in a trilogy of albums (“Rosa de los Vientos”, “Tiempos”, and “Mundo”)

So you don’t have to go far, here is a video of Juanes new single, “La Luz”.