DANIELA ROMO, “TODO, TODO, TODO”

22nd May, 1991

Wiki | Video

As you've probably gathered by now, I'm not necessarily the most knowledgeable person about the various forms, genres, and cultures of Latin music. There's a lot about it I simply don't understand, and even more I think I understand but consistently get wrong. And yet I think I must be making some headway, at least as far as my listening instincts go, because my first thought when the opening notes of this song began to play was:

God damn am I glad to hear some salsa up in this bitch.

When Daniela Romo last caught our eye, she was singing a Big Ballad that served as the theme to a telenovela she was starring in, a majestic, even slightly Gothic piece of sonic architecture. But now she's gone tropical with an effervescent, funky dance song that entered the lists as the soundtrack to summer, and was — it didn't leave the top of the chart until August. And for good reason; we haven't met very many dance songs on this travelogue (at least compared to ballads), but this is easily the most easily danceable yet, hitting the rumba beat hard and making even unfunky white me jig in my chair on the pasodoble.

But Romo hasn't fully left behind her Gothic-novela self. The song is a kiss-off to a man who doesn't treat her right; the "todo, todo" (everything, everything) of the chorus is what she will forget about him. But the celebratory mood of the music makes a lyric, and even a performance, that could be played as full-blooded ranchera-level melodrama, even more of a kiss-off; he's not even worth getting upset over, and she's inviting the whole world to the goodbye party. It's a fabulous recording, even slightly adventuresome with some phased vocals in the breakdown, and has left me with one of the biggest smiles on my face that any song so far has done.