ROBERTO CARLOS & ROCÍO DÚRCAL, “SI PIENSAS, SI QUIERES”

29th February, 1992

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I haven't been doing this long enough to really experience the sensation of two titans of the field returning for a joint victory lap, but of course Latin Pop didn't begin in 1986 — the Billboard Latin chart did. Roberto Carlos and Rocío Dúrcal both had much more storied careers than the glimpses we've had, giant unknown (to us) icebergs of careers much greater and deeper than the few measly juts above the waterline we know. But since I haven't (yet) considered it a part of my duty to immerse myself in the full discographies of the artists who attain to the number one spot, all we have to go on is what's broken through that surface.

In comparison to Roberto Carlos' two previous entries, "Si El Amor Se Va" and "Abre Las Ventanas Al Amor," this is a significant improvement (especially on the latter). Where those sounded rather like dusty, plastic-instrumented hymns, this is a living ballad, with a rhythm less stately and more oceanic. It reminds me most, in fact, of Rocío Dúrcal's first appearance (and our inaugural entry), "La Guirnalda," which rode a similar seaside-mariachi rhythm to lovely effect. And while it doesn't rise to the level of her last solo entry, "Como Tu Mujer," which managed to combine mariachi and stateliness to thrilling effect, this is a solid duet, a pair of beautiful performances with an effective if somewhat conventional production.

"Si piensas, si quieres" means "if you think ... if you want," the opening phrases of arguments made by each singer. The occasion of the duet is a possible reunion of separated lovers; each of them is cautious about the idea for different reasons, she because he's broken her heart before, and he because he doesn't want to be tied down. Conventional again; but she's forthright about him having to change his ways, and he weasels around about being a bohemian dreamer in love with life. (Direct translation!) When the song is over, the reunion remains theoretical, conditional, everything hinging on those looming, unbridgeable Ifs.

ROBERTO CARLOS, “ABRE LAS VENTANAS AL AMOR”

31st March, 1990

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The last time we had Roberto Carlos over I compared the song to a hymn; this time around I'm reminded of the Christian music of the 70s and 80s with which I grew up. Not that people like Amy Grant were really using melodies this cloyingly circular, but the lightweight production and the singalong, grade-school pep-rally nature of the chorus sends me right back to childhood, when friendly bearded men with guitars at church were my only standard of live music performance.

There's very little else to say; the title translates as "open your windows to love," and it's exactly the kind of feel-good, hippy-dippy singalong that suggests, with the only real musical interest coming in the stiffness of the 2/4 beat, a plod which makes me think of polka and the roots of ranchera, which anyway is preferable to thinking about the song. Roberto Carlos was well past his prime here, easily scoring with some new-age nonsense that sounds like it could be from anywhere and anywhen, while the hungry kids of 1990 were busy inventing Latin pop identity for the next two decades. We'll catch up with some of them soon enough.

ROBERTO CARLOS, “SI EL AMOR SE VA”

19th November, 1988

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Although you can't tell just by looking (or listening), this is the first Hot Latin #1 by a pop star who usually sings in another language. (Los Lobos don't count because they were never pop stars, just a rock & roll band with a lucky hit.) Roberto Carlos is Brazilian, and his long, hit-filled career has mostly been in Portuguese, with occasional side trips to the Spanish-language market, as though just to prove he could. He's the kind of silky-voiced ballad singer that is much more successful in Romance languages than in English, with this song in particular sounding as much like French chanson as Latin romántica.

("Romántica," I should point out, is the catch-all marketing term for much of the music we've been seeing and will continue to see on this journey: modern Latin ballads, generally with only a hint of any originating local or national tradition. For example, mariachi singers can also sing romántica, but they don't sound very mariachi when doing it.)

"Si El Amor Se Va" translates as "When Love Goes Away," and the lyric is more or less a high romantic list of all the terrible consequences of love’s disappearance — "faltan los detalles/Y en las mismas calles/Nada es igual" (the details fade, and in the same streets, nothing is the same). And then the key changes, and he sings "Pero cuando está" ("but when it's here"), followed another list of the happy changes when love returns. "Vuelve la confianza/Nace la esperanza/Todo es especial" (trust returns, hope is born, everything is special). It's very much the sort of thing that could have been sung a hundred years ago in the streets of Madrid, or Lisbon, or Paris, or Rio de Janeiro at that, and the production takes the hint and sounds very like what hymns recorded in the 80s sounded like.

Or country songs — there's something very period George Jones about the way the stark opening, just Carlos' voice over cheap synth chords, builds and builds as new elements are introduced, ending with a lighters-up singalong choir. Which may be a reminder that neither country nor Latin pop are as far from hymnody as many Anglophone pop fans would like.