DANIELA ROMO, “PARA QUE TE QUEDES CONMIGO”

12th December, 1992

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Daniela Romo has appeared twice before in this tale (and if my spreadsheet is accurate she won't appear again), the first time as a powerfully-lunged singer of that most tricky of ballad forms, the telenovela theme song, and the second as a breezy dancey salsa diva. It might be too reductive to claim that last part of the trilogy finds a middle ground between the two — it's definitely more of an uptempo swing than a dramatic recitative — but while there's undoubtedly an island groove to the song, its tempo is more stately than hip-shaking. Even the ska rhythm under the chorus is taken at a pace too slow to skank to.

I like it a lot, not only because any uptempo track is better than another goddamn ballad (although I've even been liking the ballads lately too), but because it's the kind of thing I was expecting to hear a lot more of when I initially began this project. My exposure to Latin Pop, like a lot of clueless white Americans', has been limited mostly to party situations, when of course uptempo dance songs are pretty much necessary, and so the swooning (and often cheesy) romanticism of the slower, for-individual-listening songs has represented both a surprise and a kind of frustration. Though of course a glance at the contemporary Hot 100 chart shows just as many drippy adult-contempo ballads in the top spot there — which makes me wonder if the relatively high-energy state of postmillennial pop is the real outlier.

Anyway, none of this has much to do with Daniela Romo, whose strong voice and penchant for slightly gaudy melodicism has been one of the most enjoyable things about this journey so far. "Para Que Te Quedes Conmigo" is a slightly old-fashioned song about all the things she will do to get her lover to stay with her, and can be read as either super-romantic or kind of comic, depending on your preference (me, I'm sticking with comedy every time). But the lyrics don't matter as much as the punchy horns and the way her voice punches through just as clearly over a flat-footed rock beat that breaks into a lazy island half-step on the chorus.

DANIELA ROMO, “TODO, TODO, TODO”

22nd May, 1991

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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.

DANIELA ROMO, “DE MÍ ENAMÓRATE”

20th December, 1986

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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? . . .