ONDA VASELINA, “TE QUIERO TANTO, TANTO”

22nd August, 1998

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One of the flattening effects of examining the Latin chart from this top-down position, as it were, is that we never get much of a feel for the nitty-gritty of a single country's pop scene: with so many competing constituencies making up the US Latin market, it's small wonder the chart moves slowly and relatively lumberingly: flukes excepted, it's the artists that have the widest transnational appeal who consistently show up on this particular radar.

This is one of the flukes. Like most countries, Mexico has long had its little galaxy of well-scrubbed teenpop stars and "manufactured" groups given plenty of time by local variety or light entertainment programs, but that aren't known outside the country -- or even sometimes outside the capital. Onda Vaselina (wave, or sound, of grease) was originally put together in 1989 by Mexican pop lifer Julissa to perform in a production of Grease, at which time their ages ranged from six to twelve. Nearly a decade and several casting changes later, they were perhaps closer in appeal and musicianship to Saved by the Bell: The College Years than to their pop contemporary Ricky Martin.

But then an odd thing happened: "Te Quiero Tanto, Tanto," a seriousface guitar ballad (so seriousface that the chord progression follows vaguely but not actionably in the footsteps of Cat Stevens' "Father and Son") became a hit off the back of the popular telenovela Mi pequeña traviesa (my little imp), and if Youtube is any indication, was the song of choice for Mexican quinceañeras, graduations, weddings, and reunions in 1998. The vocal performances are wobbly, the backing is dull montage-bait, and the song itself is hackneyed and syrupy -- all of which is why, despite myself, I kind of like it. Look at these spunky kids, putting on a show. I wouldn't be surprised if they were trying to save the rec center from some evil developer.

ALEJANDRO FERNÁNDEZ, “YO NACÍ PARA AMARTE”

18th July, 1998

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Three singles from the same album, three number-one hits — this is Enrique Iglesias levels of success, and it's worth taking a moment to step back a bit from the churn of the chart and survey the landscape. The Hot Latin #1 spot has had its dominant artists, of course — Luis Miguel is not yet thirty in 1998, and hardly to be counted out — but the totalizing effect that the new generation (Iglesias, Fernández, and soon enough Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, and one still unheard voice) is having is unprecedented. From the perspective of 2012, it looks very much like a bubble, like so much else in the late 90s, from Bill Clinton's Pax Americana to the first dotcom rush to unprecedented profits from sales of recorded music. But in 1998, 9/11, Web 2.0, and the cratering of the music industry are still far in the future. So is the splintering of the Latin market, which will make the coming decade fascinating in its novelty, diversity, and unpredictability; but here at the tail end of the twentieth century, the illusion of consensus reigns supreme.

"Yo Nací Para Amarte" does nothing to break the illusion. Alejandro Fernández, with the support of the Estefan machine, has been established as a major young heartthrob, and this third single — written, once more, by Kike Santander — is another swooning ballad in a classicist mode. A bolero, with sensitive finger-picked guitar leads and gently swaying percussion, it leans deliciously florid and is only kept in check by the extraordinary sensitivity of Fernández' vocal performance; listen to the infinitesimal pauses and controlled quaver on the final chorus, and you can hear why Luis Miguel, the reining king of vocal technique, may have cause to worry.

The floridity, then, is all in the lyrics — and they're extremely florid, as you might guess from the title ("I was born to love you"). A declaration of self-immolating desire as hyperbolic and quasi-religious as anything found in medieval courtly-love poetry, it's hard to take seriously as a statement made from one adult to another. From a literary teenager to what he imagines the girl he has a crush on to be, however — but that way lies unprofitable autobiography. Thank God for Fernández' coolly controlled interpretation; the slight irony and distance he provides is the only thing keeping the song upright.

CARLOS PONCE, “REZO”

27th June, 1998

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Carlos Ponce was an actor, pinup, and singer, in that order; he'd been working in telenovelas since 1990, when he was eighteen, and the fact that it took until 1998 for him to release a debut album suggests that music was neither his first passion nor the most efficient use of his talents.

Or maybe I'm just letting the performance influence my reckoning. There's nothing about it which suggests a distinct musical personality: the dreamy-ballad-into-gospel-swayalong format is cribbed from Ricky Martin, the gruff, limited-range singing (until he finally lets off a single falsetto peal in the outro) is reminiscent of nonsinging actors forced to sing anyway from Richard Harris to Johnny Depp, and the indistinctly anonymous instrumentation that puts him front and center makes it clear that it's not music but showbiz that is really being celebrated here. The gospel choir makes up for his own improvisatory deficiencies and lack of mellifluousness; it's almost as if that was the idea.

The song itself is a glib declaration of love: "Rezo" means "I pray," though the connotation leans more towards the recitation of Catholic prayer than to the impulsive spirit of evangelical prayer. Which may be one way of explaining the poor match between song and style; the entirely secular subject of his prayer is that she love him back, "y que mi vida decores con tus gustos, tus colores" (and decorate my life with your tastes, your colors). It's the kind of thing that would be sweet if sung in a romantic comedy and creepily terrifying in real life. Which is true of most pop, probably; but Ponce's not a strong enough musical actor to sell the idea convincingly.

ELVIS CRESPO, “SUAVEMENTE”

16th May, 1998

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Just as Marc Anthony was our first real taste of salsa, Elvis Crespo is our first real introduction to merengue. (The only other song to carry the tag so far is a bachata song, and I was hedging my uninformed bets.) Like salsa, merengue has a long and storied history that has remained mostly submerged throughout this travelogue, although if Billboard had started the chart earlier in the 80s, or even in the 70s, it would probably have made an impact earlier. But merengue's much older than salsa; it was first recognized as a distinctly Dominican style of music in the 1850s, and while its journey from a rural folk music of (probably) African and Taino origin to a mass-popular dance music in the late 20th century was long, involved and achieved through political revolution, generational immigration patterns, and outright class warfare, the basic güiro rhythm is immediately recognizable and irresistable.

"Suavemente" (smoothly) is a song you know even if you think you don't, with a chorus so immediate and recognizable that Pitbull (of course) tried to hop on it for a failed hit last year; while it didn't actually cross over to Anglophone radio, it's so streamlined and punchy that I can't help thinking of it as a precursor to the "Vida Loca"/"Bailamos" mini-Latin Invasion that was more hyped than actual in 1999. (But we'll get to that.)

The lyrics, as is fit and proper to an uptempo dance song peaking just as summer begins to peer around the the corner, are mostly standard fluff about wanting to feel your lips kissing him again — but if the words are empty-headed, the music's turbo-hipped, and there's more genuine eroticism in the complications of the rhythm, the horn charts punctuating the conversation in swing patterns, and the delicious call and response in the second half, than in most of the dramatically "romantic" lyrics we've seen so far.

In 1998, there is no way of knowing that Elvis Crespo would not be another Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, or Enrique Iglesias; on a purely pop basis, "Suavemente" is at least as accomplished as anything any of them have sent to the #1 spot so far. But we'll only be hearing from him once more before we catch up to the present (at least up through 2012; for the future, anything's possible). Which is probably unfair, but that's the case for most few-hit-wonders. Pop is decidedly unfair.

SERVANDO Y FLORENTINO, “UNA FAN ENAMORADA”

9th May, 1998

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1998 was, globally speaking, the year of the boyband. In the wake of the dissolution of British stalwarts Take That, a new generation of groups like the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Boyzone, Steps, 98º, and Westlife rushed in to fill the void. The pull of this rising global tide was felt in Latin pop as well — former boyband icon Ricky Martin established himself as a solo artist (not unlike Robbie Williams in the UK), and Servando y Florentino scored, Hanson-like, a solitary left-field #1 out of the Venezuelan pop-salsa scene.

Seventeen and sixteen respectively the week this song hit #1, Servando and Florentino Primera had been homeland heroes for several years already as the voices of La Orquesta Salserín, one of the primary competitors to Menudo throughout the Americas. Like Enrique Iglesias, they had a respectable pop lineage: their father, Alí Primera, had been one of the shining lights of Venezuelan nueva canción in the 60s and 70s; and like Marc Anthony, they stood by the relative authenticity of salsa despite their unabashedly pop profile.

Not that Marc Anthony had anything to worry about. "Una Fan Enamorada" ("a [female] fan in love") is very much boyband material, from the plushy pop-disco melody (recalling an earlier era of boyband, the Bee Gees) to the lyrics' apparently-sympathetic-but-on-examination-not-really portrait of their own fanbase. Such songs are always exercises in ego-stroking for the singers — even when they approach the tragic near-perfection of Eminem's "Stan," the unspoken premise is still how great the artist must be to inspire such cracked devotion in the first place. "Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."

And Servando and Florentino aren't quite up to even the relatively gentle rigors of the song. The highest reaches of the melody scrape against the limitations of their immature voices, and even the closest thing salsa has to a sure thing, the funky breakdown at the end, is rendered glib and pointless by their inability to riff convincingly. Like too many boybands, they were the sound of a season, and struggle to be heard to any great effect beyond.