Thus begins Utopía, the new album from Dominican-American bachata king Romeo Santos. The album’s intro reimagines the classic Fernando Villalona merengue cut, and paints a clear picture of what you’re about to get into: “I am Dominican/I’m not going to forget my roots/I am a bachatero/It’s in my blood.” The album it introduces is a veritable syllabus for the distinctly Dominican genre of bachata, a record full of collaborations between its biggest star of the present and the legends from its past.
Santos didn’t need to do this. On his last LP, Golden, he pushed bachata’s boundaries through collaborations with reggaetoneros like Nicky Jam, Daddy Yankee and Ozuna and urban radio mainstays Ne-Yo and Swizz Beatz. The result cracked the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 and dominated the Latin and Tropical charts, proving that the market for Spanish-language music was big enough to render the old crossover paradigm irrelevant. He is a massive, ground-shifting star—the Beyoncé of bachata. For his fourth LP, he could have done anything; that he chose to celebrate bachata’s rich history and lift up his forebears is nothing short of remarkable.
This undercurrent of humility runs through Utopía. Santos is inarguably the biggest star in bachata, but to get there he had to stand on the shoulders of others. Here, he gives all of them their due. The album features all four members of Santos’ group Aventura—in their prime, they were derisively been referred to as bachata’s N*SYNC, but their popularity helped raise the genre’s profile. There are appearances by the OGs Santos grew up listening to in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, legends like Antony "El Mayimbe" Santos. El Mayimbe is the godfather of bachata, credited with helping take it from the campo to the capital, bringing the music of the working class to the mainstream—in the Dominican Republic, at least. On “Bellas,” Santos’ collaboration with El Mayimbe, Santos takes a back seat to his elder on his own record. Santos’ generosity isn’t just symbolic: “Canalla,” his collaboration with El Chaval de la Bachata, is the bachata veteran’s first new song on the chart in more than a decade.
Of course, this is still Romeo’s album. While he shares the spotlight with other artists, the album is still filtered through his perspective. Each collaboration on Utopía is with an artist he grew up listening to, so you won’t find Prince Royce or any of his contemporaries here. This serves the album well—rather than try to squeeze the entire history of the genre into one 12-track LP, he instead explores his own musical DNA. The results are often stunning.
Each track is molded to match his collaborators. On the Raulín Rodriguez track “La Demanda,” his lyrics slyly reference some of Rodriguez’s best-loved hits. And while the Aventura reunion will garner most of the headlines, the most important collaboration on the album is arguably the reunion of Monchy y Alexandra, the male-female duo that broke up in 2008. Alexandra is the only woman on the record, and her contribution stands out for not only for its rarity but its heat and sensuality. It’s hard to understate the impact of a prominent female voice on a big bachata record—women are almost always the subject of these lamentations, but their perspectives are rarely heard.
Utopía’s sonic palette is somewhat traditional, with the requisite requinto lead guitar, segunda electric rhythm guitar, bass guitar, bongos, maracas and guiras. But he still lets his guitarist flex a bit, as on the blistering solo in the middle of “ileso.” If you think the songs sound the same—a common, if lazy, criticism of bachata—you’re not listening closely.
Lyrically, Utopía consists of lovesick anthems oozing with drama. The aesthetic is on full display on opening song “Canalla”: “Hoy voy a morir de un amargue / Y la asesina eres tú / Este masoquismo es rentable / Aunque me afecta la salud” he sings, or “Today I will die of bitterness /You’re the murderer /The masochism is profitable /But it affects my health.” Extra, for sure, pero soy Dominicano. “Maldito sentimiento,” Santos and Zacarias Ferreira sing on “Me Quedo,” lamenting their “damned feelings” like Drake drowning in his tears in VIP. How you feel about all of this depends on your tolerance for melodrama. But it’s inherently of bachata, and therefore, Dominican.
Santos is such an outsized star within his genre that his gravitational pull is strong enough to shape bachata with each new album. If Golden drew English-language stars into his orbit, getting them to cross over into Spanish language music (as opposed to the more common inverse) and introducing bachata’s profile to their audiences, Utopía is re-shaping the fabric of bachata spacetime, shining light on living legends and reuniting defunct-but-influential acts from its recent history. It’s a monumentally generous act, evidence of humility and star power that makes Romeo one of the most beloved Dominicans on the planet.
