BARRIO BOYZZ & SELENA, "DONDEQUIERA QUE ESTÉS"

26th March, 1994

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World, she's arrived. Prepare to be changed.

We've encountered Selena before, but while she was notable, the song wasn't: a perfunctory saunter through a traditional romántico duet that almost anyone we've seen in these pages to date could have done just as well, to just as little effect. And she's back duetting with another flash-in-the-pan; for the second time, she's just about the only reason to pay attention to her partners' second (of two) appearances at the top.

But Barrio Boyzz, while they may not graze our notice again, have this much over Álvaro Torres: they sound like Now. The snapping new jack swing beat, the house piano, and the alternately lush and silky harmonies are all precisely where urban candyfloss pop was at in 1994, and Selena has outgrown her Ana Gabriel imitation, instead channeling an r&b diva that not only keeps up with but far outpaces the Boyzz. Their name was on the hit — she was officially a guest on their album, which was named for the song — but nobody buys Barrio Boyzz compilations for the song: by all reckonings, it's her first major hit, the place where Srta. Quintanilla-Pérez, quinceañera performer, talent-show winner, and jobbing local-circuit singer, became Selena, global pop star.

The song (as opposed to the production) is still not quite worthy of her talents. The translated title would be "Wherever You Are," and the chorus continues, just as tritely in Spanish as it comes out in English: "remember, I will be there at your side ... I think of you and feel for you ... I will always be your first love." But she has a sharper sense of rhythm than her duet partners and is in full command of her impressive vocal faculties, and once the dovey lyrics die down and she can just play with the beat, she scats circles around all of them. Not even Mariah was showboating like this; Mary J. Blige is about the only English-language equivalent, and she hadn't yet come fully into her own either.

But enjoy the breezy New York funk while it lasts; when she returns, it will be as a full-throated Texan, and the world will be, ever so briefly, hers.

JON SECADA, “CREE EN NUESTRO AMOR”

27th February, 1993

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This is Jon Secada's third single, and third appearance at the top of this chart; a skeptic might be forgiven for thinking that Latin Pop was so devoid of new ideas or talent that a single shirtless Cuban-American singing adult-contemporary fluff with a vaguely urban beat represents a tidal wave of the New and the Now, and a general dissatisfaction with what the rest of the Latin universe was offering up.

There are two responses to make to this: first, an acknowledgement that Jon Secada's charms are beginning to pale. We've seen him run through his paces, and there are no surprises here, unless you count the shift from muted, ballady piano chords to snapping not-quite-new-jack-swing beats which does for an intro here. Even the melody is familiar, and Secada's bag of tricks — oh, look, he's going into falsetto on the third chorus — is starting to sound like a cheap copy of himself. If "Otro Día Más Sin Verte" was a breath of fresh air, this is that same air after having been recycled a couple dozen times through the system, a photocopy of a photocopy that retains the outline but loses the distinctiveness and clarity of the original.

The other response is, of course, that the number one spot is a very narrow, and in a lot of ways unrepresentative, stripe on any chart. At this point in history, reggaetón was being popularized by El General, rock en Español was being popularized Stateside by Maná and Café Tacuba, and cumbia was beginning to make waves outside of South America and rural Mexico. Not to mention the first hits of a new generation of pop stars — Mexican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, estadounidense — who won't crest up to the number one spot for several more years, and who will profoundly transform Latin Pop into something modern and sleek and danceable, and change Anglophone pop too, in the process. That Jon Secada happened, during these weeks, to sell the most records, is no indication of the earth-and-sea-shaking shifts under way elsewhere on the charts.

But even Secada, in his way, was transformative: before him, it was a relative rarity to find an American — that is, a United States of American — at the top spot on the main US Latin chart. It will not be a rarity from here on out. Latin Pop is growing more American, and America is growing more Latin. This is a change which will not slow down in the years to come.

JON SECADA, “OTRO DÍA MÁS SIN VERTE”

4th July, 1992

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The beat drops, a beat coiled and springy like new jack swing, cool and dusty like trip-hop, and we have arrived. This is Modern Music (mk. 1992), as up-to-the-minute and of-its-time as music ever is, and we have entered a new phase in our journey, almost audibly leveling up (as they say in gaming) into a world where the rules of combat and cheat codes are slightly different even if the basic contour maps remain the same.

And another entry in my increasingly-specific list of firsts is born: this song marks the first time I knew and liked a song on this list at the time, and listened to the radio specifically for it, and knew the words and sometimes sang along if I was sure no one was around to hear. I lived in Guatemala, but it was the English-language version I knew best; though I knew "Otro Día Más" well enough to run the two side-by-side in my head and compare the translation. Secada's bilingual songs, by the way, were as precisely accurate in translation as I've ever seen; unlike Gloria Estefan, he stayed on-message regardless of language.

And here also is where I run up against one of the first barriers of memory and experience between myself and my possible? potential? anyone-out-there? readers. Because I know "Just Another Day (Without You)"/"Otro Día Más Sin Verte" as one of the big, all-encompassing, signature hits of the early 1990s; maybe not quite in the league of "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" or "Losing My Religion," but also not far behind. But I have no idea whether English-language listeners, whether they were there for the early 90s or not, have similar associations with the song. Was Secada confined to the Latin Pop ghetto, or did he cross over? Was he stuck in adult-contemporary purgatory, or did people dance when they heard him? There's only so much that Wikipedia can tell you.

I don't know. But in the context of this list, this travelogue as I've been calling it with rueful hyperbole, it's a sea change. Secada most definitely does not sound like Luis Miguel or Julio Iglesias or Juan Gabriel, the three biggest male stars we've had up to this point — he sounds not Spanish or Mexican, but American, which is to say black. (Well, he sounds Cuban, which is what his parents were; but if you know your ethnographic history, that's just another way of saying black.) The laid-back club beat, the soulful, extemporaneous voice which rides it comfortably, the way he sings in the back of his throat like an r&b singer instead of clear and from his chest like a ballad crooner — after the last sixty entries, it's like hearing Sam Cooke when all your life you've known nothing but Perry Como.

I don't want to oversell this; it's obviously still a very conventional adult-contemporary ballad, perhaps not all that different from what Michael Bolton and Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart were peddling around the same time, but the springy beat and the Cuban floridity of expression hold it in good stead. I can't possibly be objective about it, and I don't want to be; it's one of the signature songs of my youth, and even if I haven't heard it for fifteen years I still know its every detail with the intimacy of early love.