Will’s take on “Sex and Love”

“Sex and Love”? Dang, I found myself wondering just before hitting play, what will the story behind this one be? But forty minutes later, I still wasn’t sure. I guess it was about sex and love, but not too much. There wasn’t any depth to the songs (surprising, I know), but there isn’t even a hit like Iglesias’ previous single “Tonight (I’m F**kin’ You),” which was so straightforward it was a little shocking, and had a great dance beat. The closest Iglesias comes to a hit with this album is “I’m a Freak.”

So the album is stereotypical love-club-dance music? NO! It’s Spanish love-club-dance music! Mucho better, right? I guess so. It adds at least a little personality to the album. “Loco” conjures up Derek Zoolander’s “Blue Steel” and “Noche y Dia” is pretty hot.

Overall, the album is a step back. Iglesias was, at one point, the hottest Spanish singer since Ricky Martin. He and Pitbull delivered the smash hit “I Like It” not four years ago. But now, “Sex and Love” is missing anything that’s got that special “it factor.” The album feels like Iglesias was afraid to do anything new or special. It’s half-hearted. With his storied and star-studded past, we can only hope that Iglesias pushes a boundary and tests some new water with his next album, because this sure didn’t do it. It’s apparent that we can only call Enrique Iglesias “The King of Latin Pop” because he’s the only Latin pop star that breaks into mainstream radio.

Key tracks:

“I’m a Freak”

“Bailando”

“Loco”

“Noche y Dia”

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Micah’s take on “Sex and Love”

Clearly, I’m not Enrique Iglesias’ target audience. Lyrically, his songs seem to dwell firmly on the far side of poetic; musically, they sound like a bored college student spent an hour or two building a few beats on his laptop. I can’t stand a good amount of pop music, and his work is about as middle-of-the-road as pop gets.

But, “Sex and Love” isn’t terrible. It’s not great, by any means, nor is it good. It’s passable, though, and frankly for an album with twelve producers to be passable is a bit of a feat.

Iglesias seems to be much more comfortable, or at least listenable, when singing in Spanish; maybe it’s because I can’t understand how average the lyricism is in a foreign tongue, but the non-English cuts give off a sense of musical investment absent in the rest of the album. “Bailando,” while not something I’d listen to regularly, is certainly a fine pop song. If it was on the radio, I wouldn’t change the station for a good thirty or forty seconds.

“Let Me Be Your Lover” is another surprisingly strong track, especially since it apparently was the result of a collaboration with Pitbull. Again, not my thing, but listenable. Catchy. Not that overproduced.

Is Iglesias releasing a mediocre-to-passable album because he’s on the verge of an artistic discovery? No. It’s because it sells. I’m not going to pretend that “Sex and Love” represents anything more than ephemera that’ll drop out of our collective memory a few months from now. But for another entry in an artistically bankrupt market, it manages.

Key tracks:

“Bailando”

“Let Me Be Your Lover”

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars