The miniaturized and necessarily distorted picture of entire careers that this blog, scraping only along the top level of a single ancillary chart, presents is rarely given such a finished narrative as Olga Tañón's three appearances. (This was the third; as of this writing, fourteen years later, it's unlikely but not impossible that she will return.)
In her first appearance, she had partnered with the great Mexican songwriter Marco Antonio Solís to create an elaborate diva ballad on a very traditional Spanish-language pattern with poky, amber-frozen production; in her second, five years later, she had moved on to millennial-era adult-contemporary, all glistening production and sublimated R&B. Here, she finally sounds like the merengue star she always was, even if the pop production is more generic kitchen-sink Latin Pop than actual merengue -- the merengue version of "Así Es la Vida" (Such is life), all rhythm and horns, is an object lesson in the way that Peak Music Industry of the millennial era understood regional Latin music as essentially subtractive.
But having the third act of a #1s career being a celebratory uptempo song is in itself not particularly noteworthy, although as a rule I'm all for celebratory uptempo songs. What really makes it narratively satisfying is the lyrics. In "¡Basta Ya!" (Enough!) Tañón was ending a relationship, fed up with deception and aloofness; in "Cómo Olvidar," (How to forget) she was mourning the loss of physical love, the body remembering what the mind doesn't want to; and in "Así Es la Vida," she responds to the overtures of a past lover with a lightly philosophical chorus (my rather free translation): "Isn't that like life, your luck changes day to day, I gave my life to have you, and now you want me back / Isn't that like life, you win some you lose some, I lost when I loved you, and now you're losing so much more."
It's practically an Elizabethan kiss-off, and paired with the dramatic flamenco guitars, drumline percussion, and merengue horns and delivered in Tañón's deep, resonant voice (she was 33, which in traditional pop terms meant she was due for divadom), it's one of the strongest songs we've had in what has been a pretty good couple of years.
In her first appearance, she had partnered with the great Mexican songwriter Marco Antonio Solís to create an elaborate diva ballad on a very traditional Spanish-language pattern with poky, amber-frozen production; in her second, five years later, she had moved on to millennial-era adult-contemporary, all glistening production and sublimated R&B. Here, she finally sounds like the merengue star she always was, even if the pop production is more generic kitchen-sink Latin Pop than actual merengue -- the merengue version of "Así Es la Vida" (Such is life), all rhythm and horns, is an object lesson in the way that Peak Music Industry of the millennial era understood regional Latin music as essentially subtractive.
But having the third act of a #1s career being a celebratory uptempo song is in itself not particularly noteworthy, although as a rule I'm all for celebratory uptempo songs. What really makes it narratively satisfying is the lyrics. In "¡Basta Ya!" (Enough!) Tañón was ending a relationship, fed up with deception and aloofness; in "Cómo Olvidar," (How to forget) she was mourning the loss of physical love, the body remembering what the mind doesn't want to; and in "Así Es la Vida," she responds to the overtures of a past lover with a lightly philosophical chorus (my rather free translation): "Isn't that like life, your luck changes day to day, I gave my life to have you, and now you want me back / Isn't that like life, you win some you lose some, I lost when I loved you, and now you're losing so much more."
It's practically an Elizabethan kiss-off, and paired with the dramatic flamenco guitars, drumline percussion, and merengue horns and delivered in Tañón's deep, resonant voice (she was 33, which in traditional pop terms meant she was due for divadom), it's one of the strongest songs we've had in what has been a pretty good couple of years.
