Of all the things I think I've gotten wrong over the first four years of this blog (covering 1986-1998), I feel guiltiest about my dismissal of Marco Antonio Solís, both as the leader of Los Bukis and solo. It's taken me a long time to learn how to listen to men whose primary audience is women, and I'm still not very good at it. (Women whose primary audience is women is much easier, and in fact a comfort zone I would do well to spend less time in.) But more than that, before this I couldn't hear traditional Mexican music in his work. It took the (synthetic, I think) string section on this record for me to grasp that it was in the tradition of Miguel Aceves Mejía and José Alfredo Jiménez: the soft-rock instrumentation and Solís' wimpy, James Taylor-y voice had glooped up my ears before.
And in fact what I've disliked about Solís in the past has, more than anything, been category confusion. I suffer from a bad case of chronological determinism: for me, one of the highest virtues of a song is that it sounds like the year it was made, and no earlier. This is, as I've noted before, a way of privileging the fast-paced, quick-turnover pop of the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) -- in many cultures and subcultures, continuity is more important than reinvention, and just because long hair and beards were no longer fashionable in the US after 1980 (although actually revisiting the non-cutting edge US media of the time would say differently) doesn't mean that someone like Solís wasn't, in his own way, and to his own audience, a sex symbol.
Bringing up James Taylor clarifies much for me: Solís was never as demonstrative or rapturous as Juan Gabriel, but he didn't need to be, any more than Taylor needed to be Springsteen. There's room for both. And even though it's a new millennium, which means that his sheer sound benefits from a light scrub-up, getting some rock instrumentation and separating the elements in the mix rather better than I remember his 90s records sounding -- even to the extent that there's a bit of cowbell on the chorus -- Solís is never going to turn dancepop or hard rock or reggaeton. He plows his soft-rock furrow, and he does it well. Looking up the lyrics reveals a depth of careful insight and expression of gradations of human emotions between lovers that only a practiced, emotionally grown-up writer could produce. He still sounds wimpy, but that's no flaw -- machismo has demonstrably done much more evil in the world, however exciting its musical expressions might be.
"Either I Go or You Go," the literal translation of the title, is more of an ultimatum than the song itself expresses: it's a negotiation of space between people who rub each other the wrong way but remain committed, a reminder that everything is contingent, and that forgiveness, and sometimes a diplomatic silence, is necessary in all things human. I actually, and I'm just as surprised as you are, love it.
And in fact what I've disliked about Solís in the past has, more than anything, been category confusion. I suffer from a bad case of chronological determinism: for me, one of the highest virtues of a song is that it sounds like the year it was made, and no earlier. This is, as I've noted before, a way of privileging the fast-paced, quick-turnover pop of the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) -- in many cultures and subcultures, continuity is more important than reinvention, and just because long hair and beards were no longer fashionable in the US after 1980 (although actually revisiting the non-cutting edge US media of the time would say differently) doesn't mean that someone like Solís wasn't, in his own way, and to his own audience, a sex symbol.
Bringing up James Taylor clarifies much for me: Solís was never as demonstrative or rapturous as Juan Gabriel, but he didn't need to be, any more than Taylor needed to be Springsteen. There's room for both. And even though it's a new millennium, which means that his sheer sound benefits from a light scrub-up, getting some rock instrumentation and separating the elements in the mix rather better than I remember his 90s records sounding -- even to the extent that there's a bit of cowbell on the chorus -- Solís is never going to turn dancepop or hard rock or reggaeton. He plows his soft-rock furrow, and he does it well. Looking up the lyrics reveals a depth of careful insight and expression of gradations of human emotions between lovers that only a practiced, emotionally grown-up writer could produce. He still sounds wimpy, but that's no flaw -- machismo has demonstrably done much more evil in the world, however exciting its musical expressions might be.
"Either I Go or You Go," the literal translation of the title, is more of an ultimatum than the song itself expresses: it's a negotiation of space between people who rub each other the wrong way but remain committed, a reminder that everything is contingent, and that forgiveness, and sometimes a diplomatic silence, is necessary in all things human. I actually, and I'm just as surprised as you are, love it.
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