Carlos y Alejandra’s debut album La Introducción was an immediate critical and commercial blockbuster upon its release in 2009. It was the best selling Dominican album of the year and garnered the duo three Premio Los Nuestro nominations in 2010. Such widespread industry recognition would have been unthinkable for a Bachata group before the early’00s, when groups like Aventura and Monchy y Alejandra began to enjoy substantial crossover success by fusing traditional Bachata with other popular Latin styles such as Vallenato and Ranchera. Carlos y Alejandra’s debut is very much indebted to the Bachata fusion styles popularized by these artists. La Introducción produced two massive singles, “Cuanto Duele”, a more traditional Bachata number that describes the pain that even devoted lovers can inflict on one another, and “Perdóname,” a salsa-inflected tale of regret whose swooning chorus owes a little to the outsized grandeur of Marc Anthony’s 2004 hit “Ahora Quien.”