Nuestro Amor (CD - 2005)

Within a year's time, RBD followed up the blockbuster success of their debut album, Rebelde, with a new studio album, Nuestro Amor. (In the meantime, they'd already recorded and released a live CD/DVD, Tour Generación RBD en Vivo.) It was rather amazing how quickly RBD were able to record a second studio album, since throughout the year they were busy touring and filming their telenovela. Evidently it helps when others write the songs and play the music, leaving only the singing for RBD. The kids worked with a lot of different songwriters for this album, unlike Rebelde, which had been written largely by DJ Kafka and Max di Carlo, the songwriting team from RBD's concurrent telenovela. This results in a more diverse batch of songs, once again with several standing out as sure-fire hits, namely "Nuestro Amor" and "Esta Corazón" above all, but also "Feliz Cumpleaños" and "Aún Hay Algo." This handful of good songs sequenced early helps make Nuestro Amor an album that should engage the already established fan base, if not add to it significantly. ~ Jason Birchmeier

Within a year's time, RBD followed up the blockbuster success of their debut album, Rebelde, with a new studio album, Nuestro Amor. (In the meantime, they'd already recorded and released a live CD/DVD, Tour Generación RBD en Vivo.) It was rather amazing how quickly RBD were able to record a second studio album, since throughout the year they were busy touring and filming their telenovela. Evidently it helps when others write the songs and play the music, leaving only the singing for RBD. The kids worked with a lot of different songwriters for this album, unlike Rebelde, which had been written largely by DJ Kafka and Max di Carlo, the songwriting team from RBD's concurrent telenovela. This results in a more diverse batch of songs, once again with several standing out as sure-fire hits, namely "Nuestro Amor" and "Esta Corazón" above all, but also "Feliz Cumpleaños" and "Aún Hay Algo." However, even though Nuestro Amor runs a bit longer than Rebelde (14 rather than 11 songs) and is more stylistically diverse, it lacks some of the charm that its predecessor had in spades. After all, over half of Rebelde is comprised of first-rate pop/rock confections in a 1980s arena rock mold, whereas Nuestro Amor is spottier and at times simply bad. Some of these new songs just don't work. For instance, "Tu Lado" is all window dressing -- a big, glitzy singalong ballad that functions best as filler, passing time until another good song comes along and seems all the better in juxtaposition. Unfortunately, there's a lot of such filler here on Nuestro Amor; the second half of the album is terribly vacant of highlights. At least the handful of good songs sequenced early helps make Nuestro Amor an album that should engage the already established fan base, if not add to it significantly. Nuestro Amor sadly is no Rebelde. It's a quickly recorded follow-up that's short on catchy songs and long on glitzy studiocraft, and it makes Rebelde seem all the more charming in comparison. Don't blame the kids, though. They don't write the songs; they just sing 'em. ~ Jason Birchmeier

It's important to remember that ABBA were enormous stars in the Latin music market during their heyday, even going so far as to re-record most of their hits in Spanish. The debut album by the Mexico-based three-boys/three-girls vocal act RBD shows a remarkable similarity to ABBA's more mature later work. The songs are uniformly catchy, and the best of them--most notably "Me Voy" and the pop-rocking "Feliz Cumpleanos"--have the same giddy bounce that was their forebears' trademark. Unapologetically slick and commercial, NUESTRO AMOR is poppy and appealing enough to follow Shakira out of the Latin market into the pop mainstream. minimize