El Perdón

Album: Fenix (2015)
Charted: 56
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Songfacts®:

  • Nicky Jam was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother. He and his family moved to Barrio Obrero in Puerto Rico when he was six-years-old.

    Nicky Jam started as a reggaetón act in Puerto Rico together with close friend Daddy Yankee in the late 1990s - the duo was also known as Los Cangris. Jam stopped working with Daddy Yankee in 2004 and branched out solo. By the late 2000s Jam's career had suffered a decline, so he decided to move to Medellin, Colombia where he was able to re-craft his sound and re-ignite interest in his music.
  • This single featuring Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias became Nicky Jam's first hit on the Hot 100. It was also a huge hit in the Spanish-speaking world, topping multiple Billboard Latin charts, as well as peaking at #1 in Spain.

    Asked by Billboard magazine why he feels the song has connected with so many people, Jam replied: "Normally, people listen to a reggaeton song and the lyrics have more to do with sex or other reggaeton themes. This is a love song and it's a song about sadness but it transmits happiness at the same time. The melody is joyful, but the lyrics are melancholy."
  • The song title translates in English as "forgiveness."
  • Nicky Jam invited Enrique Iglesias to record the song with him after the star expressed an interest in working together. "I usually write or co-write most of my songs," Iglesias told Billboard magazine. "But when he sent me the song, I called him up and I said, 'I love it. I don't care that I didn't write it.'"
  • Jam and Iglesias also recorded an English-language version of the song titled "Forgiveness."
  • Nicky Jam explained to Billboard how he came up with the song's chorus. "I was working on a totally different song, and came up with the chorus refrain [he sings]: 'Es que yo sin tí, tu sin mi, eso no me gusta.' I told my producer, 'I need you to do a beat like this with this piano to make a romantic song."

    "I didn't know what the song was going to be about," he added. "I don't write like that. I first write melodies that will make people shiver, and then, I add the lyrics."
  • This spent 30 consecutive weeks on the Hot 100 peaking at #56. In doing so the song broke the record for the most weeks on the Hot 100 without breaking into the Top 50. The previous longest that a track had charted without venturing into the Hot 100's upper half was the 29-week run of B.o.B featuring 2 Chainz's "Headband," which made it as far as #53 in 2014.
  • Enrique Iglesias included the song on his 2021 album Final (Vol. 1).

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