Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe. All my Songs of the Week are featured on my Top of the Poptastic playlist, along with the rest of my faves from 2017.
It’s been a funny year for Demi Lovato. She had the biggest hit of her career so far with Sorry Not Sorry, but that song does nothing for me, and the rest of her new album is equally underwhelming. However, she also made her first foray into featuring on dance tracks, an area where fellow former teen stars Selena and Justin have discovered there’s money to be made and hits to be had. The problem here is that Demi doesn’t have a voice suited to 2017. She will never be a queen of whisper-pop – she’s a belter by nature. But Selena wasn’t available, Demi got the job, and the results are much stronger and more vibrantly poptastic than anything else on New Music Friday these days. She appeared on one of 2017’s best semi-hits, Instruction by Jax Jones, and now she features on Luis Fonsi’s Despacito follow-up, Échame La Culpa. Demi may be half-Mexican, but she doesn’t have the natural Latino sassiness of stars like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, who might have been more obvious choices for this duet. However, she brings to it a bright boisterousness that satisfies my pop-craving ears. The Latin-pop trend has been the saving grace of an otherwise uninspiring year in music, and Échame La Culpa is up there with Despacito and Reggaeton Lentó among its best moments. Thanks again, Luis Fonsi!