17th September, 1994
Before you do anything else, you're going to want to click here. That's a link to the original version of this song, recorded in 1935 by tango pioneer, pop singer, and first Latin superstar of the twentieth century, Carlos Gardel. To get the full effect you may wish to read along with the lyrics, which I've translated (very roughly) at the bottom of this post.
Are you back? Okay.
Gardel's song, a self-consciously pastoral fantasia, a movie song (it was written by Gardel and lyricist Alfredo Le Pera for the Argentinean movie of the same name, starring Gardel), and a ballad very much in the international Thirties tradition of sumptuous sentiment married to coolly unemotional performances (compare to Bing Crosby or Dick Powell), is one of the great songs in the Latin Pop tradition, the definitive ballad of the Golden Age of Tango (ca. 1915-1955), the sudden flowering of modernism in Latin American popular culture comparable to the mixture of jazz and Art Deco in America. The tango rhythm here is almost subterranean due to the ballad tempo; only the entrance of the bandoneón in the last few choruses ties it to the traditional tango sound.
By covering this song, and by releasing it as the initial single off his new album Segundo Romance (Second Romance), Luis Miguel is explicitly placing himself as the successor to Gardel's fusion of modernism, sentiment, and iconicity -- Gardel died in a plane crash not long after recording this song, cementing his legendary status. Imagine Michael Jackson topping the charts with an Astaire cover (say "They Can't Take That Away from Me") in 1989, and you might get something of the interplay of reverence, ambition, and sheer inertial popularity at work here.
As the title of the album indicates, this is Miguel's second time laying claim to the tradition of classic Latin Pop (you may recall that the first Romance, a more strictly bolero album, produced "Inolvidable" and "No Sé Tú"), but it was far and away his most successful -- in fact it holds the record for highest-selling Latin album by a male singer of the 1990s. This probably has less to do with his fidelity to tradition than to his own magnetic self; his version of "El Día Que Me Quieras" isn't particularly faithful to Gardel's original in either chord voicing or phrasing (though he does keep the bandoneón, the instrument that sounds like a higher, thinner accordion). He converts it, essentially, into a Luis Miguel song of the 1990s, and if (like me) you have a hopeless passion for the thin crackle and low-frequency orchestras of old 78s, the blown-up keyboards and polished, glistening soup of a production is wince-inducing in comparison to the original.
But the polish and temper of Miguel's own voice cannot be denied; and if he is a worthy successor to Gardel, it is in the impeccability of his phrasing. He too paints on a sweepingly sentimental canvas, but his brushes are dry, and the song, which could easily be a wreck of overemoting in other throats, is instead a monumental sculpture, a nostalgia-free tribute to the Art Deco era in modern materials and to a modern scale. Of course, nothing ages so quickly as modernity.
Those lyrics:
It caresses my dreams,
the soft murmur of your breath.
How life laughs
if your black eyes want to watch me.
And if mine is the comfort?
of your light laughter like a song,
it calms my troubles,
all, all is forgotten.
The day you love me
The adorning rose
will dress for a party
in its best color.
And on the wind the bells
will say that you're mine now,
and laughing the fountains
will tell of your love.
The night you love me
from the blue sky
the jealous stars
watch us go by.
And a mysterious ray of light
will nest in your hair,
a strange firefly you will see
that you are my consolation.
The day you love me
nothing will be other than harmonious.
Clear will be the aurora
and happy the wellspring.
The breeze will quietly carry
rumors of melody.
And the fountains will give us
their crystal song.
The day you love me,
the songbird will sweeten its instrument.
Life will bloom,
pain will exist no ore.
The night you love me
from the blue sky
the jealous stars
watch us go by.
And a mysterious ray of light
will nest in your hair,
a strange firefly you will see
that you are my consolation.
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