Bailando
by Enrique Iglesias ft. Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona
Much easier than its word count suggests, because a third of the vocabulary is already yours. química, filosofía, física, melodía, anatomía, dimensión, respiración — Spanish and English inherited these from the same Latin, and once you know that -ía maps to English -y and -ción to -tion, you can read dozens of words you have never studied. Spend the effort you save on the verb pair te miro and me miras: one verb, and only the pronouns move to flip who is doing the looking. Spanish leans on that trick constantly and English has no equivalent, so it is the thing to drill. A1- is honest — a first-week card with a deceptively long list.
How to study this song
Learning “Bailando” means 58 entries at A1+ — 32 Spanish words, 6 adjectives and 20 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Begin with anatomía, cabeza and cerveza: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 20 distinct forms against 6 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| ES | EN | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| anatomía | anatomy | anatomia | anatomie | anatomia |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 32
- Adjectives
- 6
- Word combos
- 10
- Expressions
- 6
- Verb forms
- 20
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
“Bailando” is a Latin-pop and reggaeton single that the Spanish star Enrique Iglesias released in April 2014 for his album “Sex and Love”.
The best-known Spanish version teams him with the Cuban songwriter Descemer Bueno — a co-writer of the song — and the Havana duo Gente de Zona, whose flamenco-tinged guitar figure and call-and-response hook give the track its irresistible summer bounce.
Iglesias also recorded an English-language version with the Jamaican artist Sean Paul and a Portuguese edition for Brazil, letting the song travel far beyond the Spanish-speaking world.
The song came from the Cuban side of the collaboration: Descemer Bueno wrote it with Alexander Delgado and Randy Malcom of Gente de Zona before Iglesias joined them, and it was released on 11 April 2014 from the album “Sex and Love”.
Separate versions were cut with Sean Paul in English and with Luan Santana and Mickael Carreira in Portuguese.
Did you know?
The Spanish version spent an extraordinary forty-one weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, one of the longest reigns in that list’s history.
At the 2014 Latin Grammy Awards “Bailando” won Song of the Year and Best Urban Performance, and its brightly coloured video — shot in the Dominican Republic and Cuba by director Alejandro Pérez — racked up billions of views on YouTube, becoming one of the defining Latin crossover hits of the 2010s.
Charts & streaming
“Bailando” topped the charts across Latin America and much of Europe, including Spain, and was certified multi-platinum in several markets, among them a Diamond certification in Spain.