MYRIAM HERNÁNDEZ, “TE PARECES TANTO A ÉL”

16th February, 1991

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In some ways this feels like a throwback, but I'm not sure whether that's because it really is or if it's just fallen out that we've had a run of more "modern"-sounding ballads. And anyway, this only recalls the far-flung, dimly-remembered era of 1988, when traditionally-structured songs about the inevitable doom of romance and the necessity of grasping at fleeting moments of happiness before it all turns to shit were all the rage. (I may be misremembering. I'm not reading the archives to check.)

It's a somewhat more lively ballad than the kinds we've been having recently, but that only means it has a strong, synth-pulse rhythm; the sound of the record is still very much a soup of glossy keyboards and distant gated drums. The lyrics are all that really catch at the attention; even Hernández' voice is a little weak for the kind of agonized stateliness required here.

The title translates to "you look so much like him," and indeed it's a song that compares the current lover to an old lover, one who made life a living hell until she had to leave. But she knows that the same pattern will repeat again here; not only does he look like him, he acts, moves and loves like him, and she's just waiting for the day when "llegue a suceder lo que sospecho" ("what I suspect will happen happens"). Apparently she has a type, would be the cynical reading of the song; but of course in the heightened, stormy telenovela romanticism of traditional Latin pop, this is all the inscrutable working of an unkind destiny, a Cathy and Heathcliff and Heathcliff in adult-contemporary drag. Myriam, unfortunately, is no Kate Bush; and so the song slides slickly away from attention and memory and fails to provoke any responding passion.

MYRIAM HERNÁNDEZ, “PELIGROSO AMOR”

6th October, 1990

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I almost began writing "an unexpected reward of this undertaking is," but that's sloppy, thoughtless copymaking. The truth is it was entirely expected — in fact it was half the reason I began it in the first place. So:

A long-foreseen reward of this undertaking is the chance to familiarize myself with acts I never would have come across in the ordinary run of things. Even if I'd wanted to educate myself on the history of Latin Pop, Myriam Hernández is not one of the names that stands out in bold relief; apart from her brief early-90s moment in the wider Latin Pop spotlight, her success (though steady) has been mostly confined to South America*.

But though I inwardly groaned at the telltale keys of yet another ballad (even the flickers of guitar in the intro betrayed me), her voice made me sit up and take notice; I played it again, almost instinctively. It's not the kind of voice that would stop traffic, necessarily; and maybe only someone with my peculiar set of tastes could find it fascinating, but while she has the requisite operettic lungpower for a Latin Pop diva, and goes full-throttle on the chorus, her approach to the verses is more delicate and even kind of unusual. The texture of her voice in the quieter moments reminds me more of jazz or folk singers (the liquid clarity of Joan Baez, perhaps?) than of the strong-lunged diva who belts out her litany of amors.

And then I got home and looked up the record cover in order to create this post, and phew! It's a good thing I'm past the age of falling in love with a song and a photograph. Ahem.

*At least, that's the impression I get from her Wikipedia pages. As always, please correct me in the comments.