When groups start off as kids, there is a point when they move from “Infantile” to “mainstream” music. Some people never make it, but when they do… the production usually is a pretty darn group. Microchips seemed to barely make it before ending their career as a rock band.
The two albums prior to Energia Es Amor, reeked of childish pop music trying to compete with the big boys of pop, but with a bunch of member changes and the teenage puberty setting in, Microchips was allowed to grow up, and that they did, too a point.
Musically, the group evolved and they gave us music that could compete with anything on pop radio in Mexico, but I still think there was a lot of growing up they needed to do. During this album, the members were at the awkward stages of their puberty where their voices were odd. Jay (Yei) De La Cueva, who has now grown up to be the lead member of the rock band Moderatto, had the most perfect voice for his age. It was getting deeper and you could see that he was taking the lead of Microchips; but his counterpart, Tito De Llano (son of the group’s producer, Luis De Llano) was still too squeaky and cracked too much for his vocals to even be considered good. Then, you come to the girl members Janny and Jessica, who seriously could not sing at this age. Their voices were too high for songs it actually makes the few songs that they do sing hard to listen to.
Maybe the album came out a bit too early as the next album’s vocals are completely changed again. But when you are dealing with the music industry then wanting to release albums every year or every two years, how can you adjust seven members, who are all grown up in front of the camera. Maybe we should have asked Luis De Llano because he made that transition smoothly with Timbiriche. Why couldn’t he do this with Microchips?
I really like the album as a whole, but it has so many faults vocally that for the most part, it is a bad album for a non-infantile album. I give them props for trying, but there are only a handful of songs that don’t hurt my ears.
Since that day, I have been study Latin pop and rock music and have become a Latin pop music historian through the publishing of articles, fanzine, and websites. My goal is to teach people about Latin pop music and the history behind it with my website, Siempre En Domingo.
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