2022 Bachata Music Remix Wrap-Up

A year of remixes that, for all the sheer volume pouring out, never quite delivered that one heavy knockout punch.

Remixes — for all the volume that poured out, I personally kept waiting for one heavy knockout that never quite came. This felt like the year of DJ Tony Pecino. Khalid, who came to Korea in 2022, and Tronky, who's visiting Korea in 2023 — let's gooo, 2023!

EQS — aside from Mr.Don's The Romanze 2, it didn't quite live up to last year. Not only that, at some point every new track started sounding exactly the same to me. Still, for sensual style, EQS remains a perfect fit~

The Sevilla squad — what a run they had (Dani J, Mario Baro, DJ Husky). While Dani J kept dropping curated tracks with a distinct concept every single time, Mario Baro poured out sheer volume across all kinds of musical styles and had a standout year.

South American / modern bachata — team captain Grupo Extra dropped a full album at the very end of 2022, a collab with Touch Island's (Ataca y La Alemana) El Tiguere. But what is this feeling that Grupo Extra's music keeps drifting further and further away from me…

Grupo Extra — Bachata PopiWa (El Tiguere pres.) — listen to the full album

And at this point, let's look back at the first-half 2022 music update~

Bachata Music 2022 First-Half Update — what a hot season!

Beating out all of the above, my two big keywords for this year's bachata music are 'FV 3' and 'Bachaton.'

[Formula Vol. 3] The King's final formula — there is no border left that bachata cannot cross.

I've already written at length about FV3 (Formula Vol. 3). Its one flaw is that it ran way too long because the respect just kept overflowing — but here's the two-line summary:

FV3, the final installment of the FV series, is a magnum opus spanning the entire spectrum of bachata as it exists today.It ends by planting the flag in pop — the last territory bachata had never reached — and in doing so, declares the beginning of a whole new bachata music.

This album is both the end and the beginning of bachata music in our era. (In my opinion, anyway.)

The Bachaton (bachata + reggaeton) craze left even me — a certified bachata music nerd — bewildered. The bachata offensive from major artists came pouring in so suddenly that, as both a listener and a social dancer, I honestly didn't know what to do with myself.

No matter how open-minded I tried to be, I kept thinking: wait, is this bachata too? And as a beginner DJ who occasionally has to play music, the dilemma ran even deeper. It's good, sure — but would it actually work on a social floor….

Bachata music is now evolving somewhere far beyond its old role as background music for bachata dancing. Bachata seems to have become the newest fuse for the reggaeton industry, which is maniacally obsessed with novelty and shock value. And reggaeton infused with bachata went on to score hits on the charts and on YouTube — instead of playing at the bars.

Maybe it's time I broke my own fixed idea that the dance and the music are one and the same. Though I still hope a new dance will come along and keep up with where this music is going.

Rather than going on and on about it, I've gathered this year's flood of bachaton — or tracks you could file under major Latin pop artists doing bachata — into one playlist. Go have a listen yourself.

<Bachaton 2022/2023 — Bachata beyond bachata>

As a bonus: the second track on <Un Verano Sin Ti> — the album by Bad Bunny, reigning boss of reggaeton, Apple Music's 2022 Artist of the Year, and Spotify's Top Global Artist of 2022 — is, of all things, a merengue.

It's not bachata, but Latin pop, starving for something new, is desperately craving a transfusion of the traditional Latin rhythms we've loved for so long. The primal rhythms that made hearts pound and bodies dance.

And finally, the boss of this whole neighborhood: La Bachata.

We have now, after everything, arrived at the scene of Coldplay playing bachata. Chris Martin at the piano, singing La Bachata in Spanish. I've been listening to bachata for a long, long time, but I never thought I'd live to see this… Though of course it's an acoustic piano version, minus the bachata bass.

This was a genuinely astonishing sight. Even more than when Shakira x Ozuna's Monotonía dropped… about as much as when Romeo Santos summoned Justin Timberlake into bachata.

Will Manuel Turizo sing bachata again? Will a Romeo Santos x Manuel Turizo collab actually happen? I am so so so x100 excited. Even I, a longtime 24Horas fan, now find myself waiting for Manuel Turizo instead of Mickey Then.

In last year's 2021 music trends article, I marveled at Ozuna, Rosalía, and The Weeknd stepping into the ring, wondering — and praying — whether the trend would carry on into 2023. Well, it didn't just carry on; it blew right past my cautious little hopes.

Bachata right now is completely insane.

Epilogue

At this rate, 2023 might give us Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, and Lady Gaga singing bachata too. Maluma baby — who's already sung bachata — goes without saying.

But what I'm really waiting for is Bchta Rising 2. At this turbulent moment of all moments, I hope it reawakens bachata's true colors once more. Right now, sP feels like the only one who can pull that off.

And so, imagining what colossal events might be coming, I greet the new year —

Happy 2023!!!!