The furore surrounding Benny Blanco’s new album has been loud, with claims of cultural appropriation abounding as he, a man of Jewish heritage from Virginia, dives into an album of Latin pop. The term may apply here but the main issue is perhaps that ‘Hermoso’ is one of the most flavourless albums to inhabit that space in recent memory.
Blanco has made a career of creating music to soundtrack lifestyle influencers’ TikToks and YouTube videos; the kind of sappy dime-a-dozen sounds used on the latest reality show of choice. Now he’s shifting to new markets and has assembled an all-star cast of collaborators such as Becky G, The Marías, Neton Vega, and his wife, Selena Gomez, to create yet more saccharine cuts that largely fritter away the talent at his disposal.
Un Poco Perdido opens with bright trumpets, but rather than unfurling into anything ear-catching it plods along at a pedestrian pace that makes its 2:51 runtime feel twice as long.
From there, things pick up a little with Gomez and Becky G fronting Te Olvido (La La), which does bring some spice and intrigue to proceedings. Both performers sound fantastic and Becky may well wish this has landed on her own recent album. Joven y Salvaje, meanwhile, hears Bb trickz rap about the splendour of youth and this two-minute thrill ride is an undoubted highlight.
But that’s where the fun stops. Degenere is a reggaeton borefest that loses itself in its repetitiveness, Memoria De Paz bears no relation to the rest of the album aside from its insistence on being a forgettable slog, and a double-header of interludes, Te Amo and Cinco, only heightens the feeling that Blanco is skimping by opting to waste two of the LP’s already slight eight tracks. Forgettable and passionless, this vanity project does the bare minimum.
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