Cardio, Miguel Bosé Wea International, Spain
Rating: 59
By Carlos Reyes
Before entering Cardio’s barbed and wired content, let me emphasize that I’m a huge fan of its album cover, meaning that I love Miguel Bosé’s persona unconditionally. Whether for Bose’s foiled attempts to sound ‘serious’, or his consummation to serve his aesthetics as both, a gentlemen and diva, the dude is insanely exciting, attractive, vulnerable, irreverent, and if you’ve heard Velvetina or Sereno, one could find enough ground to justify his image of Latin Pop icon. Not to mention Bose is responsible for writing the ostentatious and utterly brilliant “Mexico” by Timbiriche.
Despite all the charm, elegancy and recurrent muscularity, his latest album narrows down to squeezing pieces that couldn’t be any less displaced with their own musicality. It’s not that the album is lifeless or that Bosé is less devoted, Cardio is simply pointed to the wrong direction and unfortunately, Bosé doesn’t give us too much meat to give it a sense. First track and promotional single “Estuve a punto de” is about that eternal desire to take risk, something about him singing “I was this close” gives the track a kind of four-wall effect (the same way “Morena Mia” is wonderfully structured). Sadly, the whole album seems to learn from the single, they’re all on the edge of being good or complete disasters.
In “Jurame”, Miguel Bose is almost unrecognizable. His deep well-dressed voice gets rowdy and this is probably the closest we’ll ever see Miguel Bose rapping. The title track is also interesting; it’s so upbeat one would swear he’s been listening to La Casa Azul. The rest of the album is quite lousy, unforgivingly preoccupied with minor-key traits that instead of embracing their silence, feel empty. There are exceptions like the closing “Y Poco Mas” and “Eso No”, which are strangely erotic but yet forgettable. Cardio is probably one of Bosé’s weakest albums, with “Estuve a punto de” profiling as one of his career-best singles, and yet I still think the man rocks. I’ll trade you Bunbury for Miguel Bosé anytime. Am I arguing that his music is better than that of Bunbury? Yes, and better than most Latin rock dinosaurs out there.