JULIO IGLESIAS, “LO MEJOR DE TU VIDA”

6th June, 1987

Wiki | Video

There are three emotional cycles I went through on encountering this song, over the several listens it has taken me to assimilate it. As best as I can reconstruct them, they are:

1. Goodness, you can tell without looking that whoever sings this is a Star.

2. Nevertheless it is like the most boring drippy ballad evar.

3. Holy shit these lyrics are amazing.

Julio Iglesias is the first name I've encountered on this journey that I know I've heard before beginning it. (The only other challenger, Juan Gabriel, is a more doubtful case; I might have heard of him, but it's kind of a generic name). He is, to put it in as offensively reductive a manner as possible, real-world famous in addition to being Latin Pop famous, and in 1987 had been so for nearly a decade, a man who had breached the Top Ten in the company of Willie Nelson (of all people), who titled an album after the home he subsequently sold to Quincy Jones, who even went to number one in the UK — and it was the Popular crew's discussion of that number one, with its predictable reliance on the British institution of continental package tours as the only lens through which Latin music makes any sense, that first gave me the small inkling of a desire to tackle a project like this, and talk about Latin music from a provincial, blinkered American standpoint.

And here he sounds like the megastar he is, with the most expensive-sounding production we've encountered to date. Listen to it on headphones and marvel at the miles of room in it, with guitars and keyboards and drums and harp and accordion separated out in a mix that creates a soft, glossy pillow for his golden, infinitely tender voice. We've been talking about vocal styles here, perhaps somewhat incoherently; but if Iglesias doesn't have the greatest voice from a technical standpoint, he's a master at deploying his cracked baritone to the maximum emotional and sensual effect. (I'd compare it to Neil Diamond again, but only because pop singers who sound like men are so rare in American pop that he's about the only game in town; and Iglesias is way better than Neil Diamond.)

But after marveling at the surface effect of the song's presentation of That Voice (you couldn't possibly have a production like this for an unknown singer, it would be laughed out of court), I grew restless; it was a slow song, a ballad, and repetitive as all hell. I caught fragments of the lyrics, but my Spanish is Central American vernacular (I'm still not used to Castilian pronunciation), and what I did catch didn't impress me; the phrase repeated at the beginning of each verse translates dully as "You were mine, only mine; mine, mine." I've never liked ballads on first acquaintance, and even today it's rare for one to push through my low attention span to really get across to me.

But then I looked up the lyrics — as I do for every song here, to check them against my ear — and translated them on the fly, and sat staring. They couldn't possibly be that poetic! I looked up the words I was uncertain of. No; they were even more poetic than that.

Manuel Alejandro, the song's composer, has been one of the premier ballad composers in Latin music since the 1960s, and he's worked with Julio Iglesias since the early 70s. Un Hombre Solo, the smash hit record from which "Lo Mejor De Tu Vida" ("the best [years] of your life") was taken, was entirely written and produced by Alejandro. His lyrical style is highly romantic, even extravagant, and I'm still a bit puzzled by at least one metaphor (is "colina cerrada" an idiomatic phrase in some version of vernacular Spanish? its literal translation, "closed hill," defeats my powers of analysis), but his choice of a simple, even basic, structure allied to vivid, poetically-expressed imagery is inspired: the result is a song with a folk-like structure but layered with a patina of García Lorca-like lyricism.

And all this is without getting into the meaning of the lyrics. He sounds tender, but there's an undercurrent of possessiveness, of predation, even of coercion, that mitigates against the common image of Iglesias as some kind of standard "passionate but honorable" Latin lover. But it's also more than just a rape fantasy; there's genuine emotion (sorrow? regret? revulsion?) in his performance. I don't rate these songs (I don't as a rule believe in ratings), but this is the greatest song, in whatever sense of the word you choose to apply, that we've had yet.

My translation of the lyric follows; let me know if I've gotten something wrong. Also, please let me know if you'd like me to include such translations from here on out. I'd most likely be doing the work anyway; would it be useful enough to you that the additional scrolling is worth it? The comments box works.

BRAULIO, “EN BANCARROTA”

25th April, 1987

Wiki | Video

As is no doubt dishearteningly obvious, I've been relying on Wikipedia and half-assed Google searches for my information about the performers that have so far marched down this particular side-street Colonnade of Fame. The trouble with that kind of overreliance is obvious: when Wikipedia fails you, you fail.

So all I know about Braulio García is that he is a Spanish national born in the Canary Islands, that his Wikipedia Español page reads like it was written by his publicist, that his career began in 1971, and that this was his only significant brush with the Billboard Latin chart. Extrapolating from the cover art, he was entering middle age and trying to feel sexy about it; extrapolating from the vocal style he employs on this song, he was a singer not unlike José José.

Except that he doesn't have the precision or control that José does; in fact he reminds me of nothing so much as those country singers with "good" voices, like Eddy Arnold or George Jones, who could have crooned with as much velvet intensity as Sinatra or Nat Cole but preferred to remain in the C&W "ghetto." Braulio's vocal style hints at the emotional extravagance that Latin song from flamenco to mariachi (and this particular pop song splits the difference, as far as one can hear under a production that sounds like Miami updating Bacharach) tends towards, but his touch is light. Like Rocío Dúrcal, he's holding back in favor of the pop moment.

Or maybe I'm reminded of country singers because it's such a country song: "En Bancarrota" means "in bankruptcy," and the lyric is an extended conceit in which his love history is related in terms of finance and banking. In English, it would be a comedy song — puns are usually discouraged in pop this side of Elvis Costello — but here it's simply an appropriate metaphor. His balance is in the red, the account he opened is bottomless/without funds (a pun on fondo), she gave him a "mala nota" (a triple pun; it could be translated "bad check," "bad grade," or "bad [musical] note," and the airbrushed female singers who come in after the line live up to it).

Again, this is mom (or dad) music, not pop in the sense that we think of it today: it's corny, sentimental, and graceful; it doesn't move. It's interesting to note how much these early charts are dominated by singers from Spain; it's my impression (but we'll see) that the western hemisphere will nearly shut the eastern out as the decades pass. I'm a little wary of drawing any comparisons with other former-colonial relationships; we'll just let the idea lie for now.

EMMANUEL, “ES MI MUJER”

28th March, 1987

Wiki | Video

Why do I put “pop idol” in the categories field when Emmanuel comes up in the draw? This song illustrates why: it’s the first song we’ve had here at the top of the Billboard Latin chart that sounds like the 1980s of myth and snark: completely synthesized, airbrushed, and blow-dried. To ears immersed in UK synth-pop, it may sound more 1982 than 1987; but a cursory Google search turns up the fact that it’s appeared on a budget Italo Disco compilation, and that nails the sound and aesthetic so precisely that I’m left wondering why I hadn’t thought of it. This isn’t Anglo pop, it’s Euro.

Which is a useful reminder that, though the Billboard chart doesn’t always necessarily reflect it, being focused on American Latin sales & radio (again, as distinct from Latin American sales & radio), that much of Latin America has closer cultural ties with Europe than Americans of the estadounidense stripe would expect. Spain and Portugal for obvious historic reasons; but Italian pop has always had a strong showing in the market as well, and French, Greek, and various Scandinavian acts have also done well in the American continents south of the Rio Grande. Italo disco – pop based on the Giorgio Moroder template – was the basic lingua franca of international pop in the 1980s and into the 90s; and the only thing particularly Mexican about Emmanuel here is his accent.

It’s not a particularly Mexican accent; I don’t mean that a listener in Barcelona would hear it the way a Londoner hears a Texas twang. It’s Standard Showbiz Spanish, the “accentless” accent that corresponds to the American English television announcer’s dialect, most strongly associated with California. Though if Emmanuel sounds like anyone American, he sounds like New Yorker Neil Diamond, a faint theatrical grit over a showman’s bellow.

It’s a slight irony that Emmanuel, with his manly croon, achieves effortlessly and (as it were) accidentally, what many of the New Pop chancers of five years previous were attempting: a sophisticated, elegant vocal over a sleek, throbbing synthetic sound. (In the attempt, many of them redefined sophisticated, elegant vocals. But no one thinks Phil Oakey or David Sylvain sounded like Sinatra.)

The song itself isn’t particularly notable, or not nearly as notable as its arrangement: a standard love song (the title translates to “she is my woman,” though from context he’s singing “you are my woman”). The only minor point of interest is when he plays with the meaning of the verb “querer.” “Te quiero,” he sings, meaning “I love you,” and then after a pause, adds “tener,” which changes the meaning of the entire phrase to “I want to have you.” Which is a cute, sexy anti-romantic gesture, but Doug Kihn or Corey Hart could have done as well. (They could also have had the same backing track, come to think of it.)

But speaking of the lyrics, this is also the first record we’ve met that an American’s (as in United States of) name is associated with. Co-writer K. C. Porter isn’t necessarily a household name even in the Miami and Los Angeles circles where he works, but his songwriting and production talents did well by Selena and Ricky Martin, to name only two major figures we’ll be meeting along the way. Seeds planted for the future; for now, just admire the totally-vanished aesthetic.

DANIELA ROMO, “DE MÍ ENAMÓRATE”

20th December, 1986

Wiki | Video

This is an epochal moment in Hot Latin history: the first time that a song associated with a telenovela has topped the chart. The telenovela in question, El Camino Secreto, starred Daniela Romo in her breakout role as — well, the details hardly matter. I haven't seen it and neither have you (unless you have, in which case feel free to enlighten us all), but word on the Internet is that El Camino Secreto (lit. "the secret road") was extraordinarily popular as 1986 came to a close, and made Romo a star.

She had been a jobbing Mexican pop singer since the late 70s (her biggest influence was apparently Rocío Dúrcal, to bring our abbreviated version of 1986 full circle), and had had the occasional hit, but it was this song, this telenovela, and this album, "Mujer De Todos, Mujer De Nadie" ("everybody's woman, nobody's woman"), which, coming all together at once and reinforcing each other with a consistent vision of a woman in love aching for the object of her love to turn to her, created a potent pop symbolism around Romo, which she parlayed into long-term balladic success in the decade to come.

Her own biography reads a bit like the plot of a telenovela: the poor-but-beautiful daughter of unmarried parents, raised by her grandmother on the mean streets of Mexico City, idolizing a famous Spanish singer/actress, and slowly, agonizingly, achieving her dream of being a famous singer/actress herself. "De Mí Enamórate" ("fall in love with me") represents the happy finale of the story, in which the biggest pop star in the Latin universe, Juan Gabriel, presents her with a suitably dramatic song to sing over the credits of her very own telenovela.

Of the six songs which topped the Billboard Latin charts in 1986, half were written by Juan Gabriel; and this might be the best of them. Romo's ability to switch from the delicate sigh of the verses to the all-out foghorn of the chorus, then chirp the dancy post-chorus breakdown ties the frankly schizophrenic arrangement together. Structurally, it's not very different from "Yo No Sé Qué Me Pasó" — two verses, a superlong chorus, then repeat the second verse and the chorus, and fade, but Gabriel's instinct for flamboyant dramatics comes alive in the stunning three-octave climb which opens the chorus. In pop terms, it's a "defining moment," like the pause in Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" before she comes crashing in again with "AND IIIIIEEIIII, etc." Much as producers salivate over such moments, they're vanishingly rare in practice — so it's no surprise that Romo's performance set a standard for the Hot Latin charts which is still difficult to match; she was the first performer to spend fourteen weeks on top, and this song is still tied for sixth place in the length of its stay at number one.

Lyrically, it retains Gabriel's (and, let's be frank, Mexican pop's) tendency towards flamboyant all-or-nothing statements. The repeated verse translates: "Since I saw you/I've lost my identity/In my head lives/Only you and no one else/And it hurts me to think/That you will never be mine/Fall in love with me." The enormous shift of the chorus, though, functions as a counterweight: the lyrics move into the future tense, and she dreams of the epic perfection that mutual love will be. The majestic, soundtracky sweep of the chorus works for lines like "The day you love me I will be happy/And with pure love I will protect you/It will be an honor to dedicate myself to you/As God desires." The post-chorus breakdown, with its funky synth drops, only repeats the sentiment in an easy glide: "When you fall in love/With my love/I will at last/See the light for once."

It's that funky, cheery breakdown that sticks in the head, rather than the bombastic swell of the chorus. Perfect for a credits sequence easing us into the action. Y aquí viene Gabriela y su amor David; ¿cómo se harán este semana? . . .

JOSÉ JOSÉ, “¿Y QUIÉN PUEDE SER?”

15th November, 1986

Wiki | Video

One thing that tends to throw a lot of people off about Latin Pop is that we Anglophones don’t necessarily always get the flow of the stuff’s history. We usually know the US/UK history by heart (jazz to swing to rock & roll to soul to rock to disco to hip-hop to electronic to now) but the generational signifiers of Spanish-language pop, not to mention the immense variety of source musics (which tend to be blurred together by modern pop production) can be opaque to us.

All of this to say, that while in this José José may seem indistinguishable, production-wise, from Juan Gabriel or Emmanuel, his presence here is a bit like Tony Bennett showing up in the pop charts alongside Madonna and New Kids On The Block. A classically-trained vocalist, José Sosa (he added the other José in tribute to his father, a failed opera singer) began in the 1960s as a jazz and bossa nova singer who dreamed of following in the footsteps of Sinatra and Mathis, and you can hear a bit of that precise, carefully-controlled technique deployed here over the Casio presets and drum pads and cooing backup choir.

It’s a slight song, nevertheless, and would be in any arrangement: a standard lament about a woman making eyes at another guy. The catchy if irritatingly repetitive chorus translates as “And who can it be, it sure isn’t me/The one who has erased me from her heart?/And who can it be, it sure isn’t me/The one who could have given her more love?” It was written by a flamenco guitarist from Spain, Paco Cepero, and I’d like to hear a traditional flamenco arrangement of it; but Cepero apparently produced this record and threw the same tinny 80s production on it that we’ve had on everything else so far, without even Juan Gabriel’s sense of dramatic flair to enliven the proceedings.

José José was forty when this was released, which is one of the things that fascinates me about the Latin chart, especially this early on, that veterans of the 50s and 60s, like he and Rocío Dúrcal, were sitting there cheek by jowl with flashy superstars like Gabriel and pretty boys like Franco and Emmanuel. To anyone whose primary experience of pop has been driven by the American charts over the past twenty years, it’s a far more egalitarian, multigenerational affair — though the standard American pop chart was too, Dionne Warwick and Steve Winwood rubbing shoulders with Madonna and Janet Jackson in 1986. The extreme youthification of all pop is still in the future, and the Latin charts will be no exception. Let’s enjoy José José while we’ve still got him, is what I’m saying.

FRANCO, “TODA LA VIDA” and EMMANUEL, “TODA LA VIDA”

11th October, 1986

Wiki | Video

18th October, 1986

Wiki | Video

It would feel ridiculous to give each of these gentlemen his own post with the same song — and virtually the same arrangement of the same song — so I've combined them.

The song in question is a Spanish-language rewrite of the 1984 Italian hit "Tutta la vita" by Lucio Dalla. Both Franco and Emmanuel have claimed to be the first to record and release it; the verdict of history has generally been on Emmanuel's side, as he's had the longer and more successful career. But Franco beat him to the number-one spot by a week, and they would spend four more weeks swapping back and forth; my guess is that the people who bought the single or requested it to be played on the air weren't too concerned with which version they got. (If I'm wrong, and there were organized phone-in campaigns and packs of girls whose hair was crisp with product bought as many copies of their favorite as they could find to keep the drama of who would be on top the next week alive, please correct me.)

Franco was a Cuban-born entertainer based in Miami attempting to orchestrate a pop career for himself. Emmanuel had been a Mexican child star in the 70s and made a significant name for himself in the 80s with big, weepy ballads; here, you can hear how his talent for emotionalism helps him to sell the song more passionately — feel the soul-like grit in his voice — than the slicker, more anonymous Franco.

It's a song that demands a certain amount of passion; the repeating musical figure that runs throughout is an echo of the insistence of the singer on getting his own way, on not being tied down, on the usual litany that men sing in songs like this. And this bird you'll never chain, etc. But the tension and release only end in crazed repetition: "TODA LA VIDA" ("all my life"). This song, too, is about a man who protests too much, as the closing lines admit. He has to keep telling himself that he values his freedom "coleccionando mil amores" (collecting a thousand loves) and "descubriendo puertas escondindas" (discovering hidden doors) because "tú [eres] al final la mas querida" (you are after all the one he loves).

It is, in fact, a better song than either Franco or Emmanuel are able to make it; and though I'd give Emmanuel a slight edge, with his Rod-Stewart-fronting-Roxy-Music performance, I can see why there was never a clear winner in the chart; it was al final pretty much the same record.

JUAN GABRIEL, “YO NO SÉ QUÉ ME PASÓ”

13th September, 1986

Wiki | Video

Last time I compared Juan Gabriel to Bruce Springsteen; a more accurate summation of his impact on Latin Pop in the 1980s would be to call him an amalgam of Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and George Michael. (It was Gabriel's world from 1980 to the mid-90s; everyone else was just living in it.) Springsteen for the connection to rootsy tradition, Jackson for the unprecedented popularity; and Michael for the flamboyant soulfulness and sure instinct for the grand gestures of renunciation and demand that pop does so well. Let's take some time to break down the lyric:

The title phrase, the first line of the song, translates as "I don't know what happened to me" — followed by "but I don't love you anymore." So far, so standard; we're in the realm of breakup song, a sturdy genre with lots of history and plenty of directions to go from here. But his rhetoric turns in on itself. "It's better to end than to go on like this/It's very sad, I know/But what can I do if today I no longer feel love?" He's starting to protest too much; but the next line seals it: "Very suddenly it's over/It's better to tell the truth and not lie." He can't be with her any more; he's been living a lie.

It's probably best at this point to refer to Wikipedia:

Juan Gabriel, when he was asked about whether he was gay, replied "Lo que se ve no se pregunta, mijo. Yo no tengo por qué decirle cosas que a usted, como a muchas otras personas, no les interesa, yo pienso que soy un artista que he dado mucho con mis canciones". ("What is seen is not asked about, young man. I have no reason to tell you, nor others, things that are none of your concern, dear. I feel I am an artist who has contributed much with my songs").

Not exactly how I'd translate it (there's no justification for inserting that "dear"), but I think you get the idea.

But that's all verse. Now comes the straining chorus: "For a while you will suffer, I know/But someone will come and give you their love sooner or later/You will see the light again/And he will never wound you/Never humiliate you/Never deceive you/Never hurt your love." That's quite the confession; few pop songs this side of Elvis Costello are quite so savage about the singer's ability to hurt.

Then: "So that you are never left alone/You need to give your love sincerely/To put an end to the betrayals/You need to say goodbye first/As I do." He's just masterful here; the soulful cracking in his voice is added to with a sobbing ranchera tone, and again I'm reminded of George Michael's unique combination of generosity and self-absorption.

Then the mariachi horns come in, playing a vaguely calypso melody with a sea-breeze cleansing quality (even if they sound a bit plastic and readymade), and he sings the whole thing again. Sure, the instrumentation is cheap and mid-80s, but with a voice like that, especially when he reaches up for the grainy high notes in the chorus, it hardly matters.

We'll be coming across Juan Gabriel several more times in the course of this adventure before he founders on the shores of the twenty-first century (just as Bruce and Michael and George would do in the English-speaking charts). But this finds him at the peak of his powers, with the world at his feet — the Billboard Latin chart started up too late to capture him in his world-conquering phase — and that his thoughts had turned to endings and betrayals, with the song drawn from an album titled Pensamientos (lit. "thoughts"), shows a reflectiveness that doesn't generally appear in the stereotypes about Latin pop. Of course Latin ballads have always been full of broken hearts and tragedy; but something this self-aware, and this relatively early, remains cherishable.

ROCÍO DÚRCAL, “LA GUIRNALDA”

6th September, 1986

Wiki | Video

Y así empieza nuestro viaje. Promisingly, I think, though I’m curious how people deeply invested in the then-current Latin pop scene heard this.

For example, did it sound old-fashioned? Rocío Dúrcal was a Spanish singer who had been a hitmaker since she was a teenager in the 50s; the success of this song (written and produced by the massively popular Mexican singer-songwriter Juan Gabriel) is a bit like Petula Clark having a US number one with the assistance of Bruce Springsteen. In 1986. Which now that I say it, sounds TOTALLY AWESOME, but not exactly what (say) a teenage Madonna fan would have wanted at the time.

The production here is very 80s, even very mid-80s, in that not-exactly-cutting-edge way that Latin pop tends towards, at least to Anglophone ears. The combination of the rather traditional oompah tempo and mariachi melody with the drum-machine-and-plastic-guitars instrumentation makes for a pleasant tension; and the trick of strategically placing waves-and-seagulls sfx for dramatic effect is a very classicist pop move which you don’t much hear anymore.

Speaking of narrative. The lyrics are pretty great, a kind of imagistic story of a woman who’s had her heart broken sitting on the beach, then meeting a totally awesome dude in a boat and going off with him into the sunset. The guirnalda of the title (lit. “garland”) is a wreath of bougainvillea flowers he gives her, and which in the heightened romantic language of the song, makes her his queen and makes her feel divine. It’s total romance-novel guff, even to the man’s green eyes (“clear like seas, like lakes”), but Dúrcal delivers it in the correct spirit, matching the breezy, pastel feel of the instrumentation with a mostly-light tone. You can hear more in her voice than she’s giving it, but this isn’t the place to pull out the full tragic-diva stops, and so she doesn’t.

So how is this as a beginning point? I like that it gestures towards the past, or anyway towards traditional Mexican music, with the stiff-backed rhythm and the flowing length of the melodic lines. It gives a bit of solidity to where we’ll be going from here: a rooted baseline for the multiple branches and weird dead ends that are the best feature of any chart voyage. But it’s also missing almost everything that excites me about current Latin pop — it’s not particularly danceable, there’s no real fusion of global musics aside from the synthesized production, and there’s no youth-oriented attitude whatever. It’s mom music, basically, which isn’t a bad thing, but also isn’t generally what we think of as pop. Which means, of course, that there’s nowhere to go from here but the future.

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.