WHAT? WHY? HOW? WHO? ETC...

Pause for a moment and breathe in that air. Mmm, the clean, sweet smell of a fresh blog not yet filled with half-baked premises, inane revelations, and stupid assertions. Savor it. It'll never be like this again.

Hi. Jonathan Bogart here. You may know me from such blogs as Don't Stay Up Too Late, where I've been making exhaustive lists of 100 Great Songs from every decade of the past hundred years, and Exist Yesterday, where I've been goofing off. But you probably don't. That's okay. I don't know you either yet.

This is a blog which exists to examine, marvel at, stare askance at, and otherwise rifle through the Billboard Hot Latin Tracks chart since its inception in 1986 to the present day. Whenever that turns out to be. The whole idea is frankly stolen from Tom Ewing's Popular series, with the caveat that I know plenty of people obsessed with British chart history, and I don't know anyone who cares much about the American Latin charts. (Which are not the same as Latin American charts.) But as C. S. Lewis said of Olaf Stapledon, Tom is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend. Yeah, Lewis was trying to beg off charges of plagiarism too.

I'm doing this because I think Latin Pop is a largely neglected field of pop music, at least in the sphere of discourse in which nerds like me operate. (Lots of people listen to it and love it, but don't feel compelled to blog about it. How I envy them.) Tastemakers like the Pitchfork boys will gladly root through obscure African, Middle Eastern, and Jamaican compilations; every otaku in America is obsessively documenting the slightest twitch of J-pop; and not a DJ farts in the longitudes between Lisbon and Moscow without it ending up on a blog within the hour; but turn the conversation towards the music listened to, danced to, and loved by a fifth of the American population (and growing), not to mention the population of Latin America itself, and hipster eyes glaze over and hipster lips start to instinctively curl. I don't wanna call racism here, but dudes. Really. What, did everyone hate high school Spanish that much? How middle class can you get?

Okay, soapbox time's up. There's hopefully not gonna be a lot of that in the future. I'm counting on you guys to be as interested in the material as I am. And hell, prove me wrong. Bury me in your superior knowledge of Latin Pop. It won't take much; I'm doing this as much for self-education as for public benefit.

Anyway. The format should be simple and self-explanatory. I'm using information from Wikipedia, which I've collated into a spreadsheet to guard against tampering, and I'll be posting audio — and maybe video, depending — of the songs so you can follow along at home without opening yet another tab and doing your own YouTube search. You lazy git.

And I'll be translating as much as possible. Everyone should know enough Spanish to get by, but then everyone should also be nice to each other, and pay their workers fair amounts of money, and not start pointless wars. Man could die waiting on the shoulds.

Oh, the title of the blog?

Meditate on the phrase "Billboard Latin Pop" for a while, and see what you come up with.