From Colombia, one Juan Luis Londoño…
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[5.38]
Juana Giaimo: While this song might be very fun to dance at nightclubs, it definitely doesn’t work in my room.
[5]
Iain Mew: I don’t find the basic song to be that outstanding, but I like Maluma’s voice and “La Temperatura” also offers one of those arrangements so stuffed full of pleasing sounds that the song they’re supporting loses its significance. The shimmery keyboard, the stuttered take-off into the chorus, whatever the squeaky thing around 2:00 is: all great.
[7]
Anthony Easton: The clarity of the trumpets, rising brightly over the small and quiet vocals, is so ingratiating and so beautiful that it makes the whole song.
[9]
Patrick St. Michel: There are moments on “La Temperatura” could veer into algorithm-generated EDM, but Maluma keeps everything focused on the beat, never diving off the track but rather just dropping in new elements to sweeten the gallop (the bass, for one). The vocal seems a bit too slight — and when it sounds like Eli Palacios is hitting on me between verses, no thanks — but the music carries this enough.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The parquet-thin keyboards and determinedly anonymous vocals sink this reggaetón number.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: A beat and slap bass searching for vocalists with even half their gumption.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Maluma is barely present, handing over his song to Palacios to cornball it up, even after the slap bass appears. Even though the Medellin rapper’s hyper-melodic delivery finds him treating verses like extended choruses, he wriggles out of the way, more interested in whatever eye candy’s passed him by (his mid-verse insistence that he only wants to sleep with Colombians is a left-field head-scratcher, at least). “La Temperatura” is a meeting of potential heartthrobs, but the lack of control at its core suggests a tactical spurning.
[4]
Brad Shoup: A lot of times, by invoking heat, you’re setting yourself up. And so it is with this strangely placid track whose hottest feature is the popping bass.
[5]