Let the rhythm take you over!
[Video][Website]
[3.89]
Thomas Inskeep: It’s funny that this song opens with Belinda singing “Esta noche…,” because Esta Noche was the name of a long-lived, recently shuttered gay Latino dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, where this song would’ve been muy popular. “I Love You… Te Quiero” is a notch above the songs Pitbull usually appears on, because mixed in with its yawn-inducing pneumatic-drill EDM-pop – like Kylie without the art, and who could’ve guessed that she’d be so influential on pop music in the ’10s? – is actually a little, y’know, Latin flavor. Just a little, mind you. The BPM on this track are still nearly hysterical, and Belinda’s got a little wisp of a voice, so there’s really not much to recommend this track, but it’s not terrible.
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: It takes a lot of moxie to describe anything happening in this collection of dated crossover house cliches as “outta control.” Luckily, we have Pitbull, for whom perspective is just something that happens in paintings.
[4]
Anthony Easton: The more anonymous Pitbull’s featuring artists are, the more anonymous Pitbull is, this provides an excellent case study.
[4]
Crystal Leww: “I Love You…Te Quiero” is a package of tricks from an era all but over at this point. These days, EDM-pop tracks that sound contemporary are driven by the clout of superstar producers, not their pop star vocalists. Belinda’s EDM-pop track was dated before it even had a chance to be real. This is a song that makes Belinda seem out of touch, each “la-la-la-la-love you” sounding more and more like a woman trying to chase rather than innovate. This is amplified when there’s a creepy man egging “how much do you love me?” in whispers in the background. That drop reminds me, of all things, of the bleats in “Party Rock Anthem.” Even Pitbull has moved onto a different sound for the most part with “Timber” incorporating a little country twang; his verse here returns to his EDM guest verse rapper days, and it sounds exhausted.
[4]
Alfred Soto: From the hornet keyboards and the “exotic” Spanish bits to the embarrassing lard butt muttering of Pitbull, this track is fourth-rate, cynical, tired, and stupid.
[1]
Scott Mildenhall: There’s no inherent negative in lyrics’ comprehensibility defying lack of familiarity with their language, but in this instance it sums up how banal the song is all round. Pitbull, the musical equivalent of a corner-of-the-screen signer, mugs to the camera as only he can, while Belinda’s singing occasionally borders bad over the bits of “Party Rock Anthem” that predicted Disclosure.
[5]
Megan Harrington: The Belinda to Pitbull ratio here is all sorts of wonky. She brings a certain high energy inoffensiveness to the song, but it may as well be the sound of me spinning my tires in a ditch compared to Pitbull’s effortlessly smooth verse.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Sometimes love is a battlefield. Other times love is an electronics show floor with every machine beeping at once.
[3]
Brad Shoup: Pit’s mostly a co-sign, giving Belinda just enough from his stores to get her to the EDM nuclear winter. At the end, after he shelves the English, he sounds… dare I say hungry? Certainly more than she does.
[6]