CHINO Y NACHO FT. JAY SEAN, “BEBÉ BONITA”

18th August, 2012

Wiki | Video

I genuinely adored Chino y Nacho's "Mi Niña Bonita", both at the time and in retrospect when I wrote about it here; but although this entry gets them out of being one-hit wonders, it has similar faults to many other attempted follow-ups to one-hit wonders: a lyric that reminds listeners of the previous song, a big-name (or as big as the budget allows) guest, an attempt to revamp a sound to keep up with musical fads. They've stripped out the reggaetón riddim, replacing it with a generic dance rhythm, invited British-Punjabi pop idol Jay Sean to croon some generic English-language sentiments, and infantilized the object of their affection even further, from niña bonita (pretty girl) to bebé bonia (pretty baby).

The result is a tune that slips off the mind as soon as it's been heard. Listeners seemed to agree; unlike the previous entry, which stuck around for three weeks, it's another of 2012's string of one-week #1s. Name recognition, quite possibly, was the only reason it charted this high in the first place, and the name that seems to bear the most weight is Jay Sean's: the musical bed powerfully recalls his three-year-old international smash "Down" -- which itself had been boosted by Lil Wayne's guest spot in a pop moment when Weezy F. Baby could do no wrong. 

But perhaps the most contributing factor to the rote anonymity of the song is that great Dominican producer Richy Peña, who gave "Mi Niña" its charming gloss, has been traded out for Reggi El Auténtico, a Venezuelan newcomer just starting out on a vaguely notable career of producing and contributing songwriting for a host of Latin artists.

There's nothing actively wrong with "Bebé Bonita," and it fulfills its functions as a pleasant way to soundtrack dancefloor flirtation, as an eminently licensable piece of agreeable music for a youth-oriented advertising campaign, and as a career extender for the above-the-title names. They won't trouble us again; although Chino y Nacho have continued to have a hitmaking career, airwave-dominating success has been largely confined to Venezuela. But we'll always have "Mi Niña Bonita."

CHINO Y NACHO, “MI NIÑA BONITA”

 20th March, 2010

Wiki | Video

Theoretically, pop music from a decade ago is the uncanny valley in pop nostalgia: far enough away to sound uncool and irrelevant compared to current work, but not far enough away to have accrued the patina of age, to sound enough unlike contemporary trends that it has its own, entirely separate charm.

And indeed the version of reggaetón that Chino y Nacho, former boy-band members from Venezuela, perpetrate here is very unlike any kind of reggaetón currently keeping pace on the global pop charts: the bright, cheery merengue horns and piano, the uncomplicated puppy-love sentiments supported by charming doo-wop vocalisms, Nacho's motormouthed rapping, are all relics of a more manic, less depressive pop scene.

But they also point toward the current landscape in less obvious ways: the way non-Black South Americans have come to dominate the reggaetón landscape at the levels of highest popularity, the remove of reggaetón from the concrete urban concerns of Puerto Ricans (and before that Panamanians) into a generalized pop language. If it's too simplistic to say that Chino y Nacho ran so that the likes of J Balvin and Karol G could fly, it's also not entirely wrong. A few years ago I drew an invidious comparison between Wisin y Yandel and Andy & Lucas, praising the Puerto Rican reggaetoneros for being more forthright and grown-up than the Spanish prettyboys; part of the story of reggaetón since 2006 is the way in which the Andy & Lucases of the pop world have been assimilated into the tropical riddim.

It's worth pointing out that the first words shouted in the song are the name of its producer Richy Peña, a Dominican-American who had been put onto the international reggaetón radar by Nely "El Arma Secreta" and Don Omar. Peña won a Latin Grammy for "Mi Niña Bonita" -- well-deserved, according to my ears, for the sheer ebullience of the tune -- and a good half of what I love about the song is his work rather than that of Chino y Nacho.

Because I really do love it: I am old enough that a decade ago is no longer distant enough to have fallen into the uncanny valley of pop nostalgia, and the glee and joy I still clearly remember experiencing when hearing it on the radio during my commute in 2010 and 2011 are undimmed by any concerns about coolness or relevance. Merengue and doo-wop were just as uncool in 2010 as they are in 2021, but their deployment here remains as heart-stirring as it was then. If the doofy, lovestruck lyrics were even the slightest bit more cynical or knowing they would ruin the song: its virginal naïveté is part of what makes it great.

A minor classic, compared to the long history of this chart, but a classic nevertheless.

SERVANDO Y FLORENTINO, “UNA FAN ENAMORADA”

9th May, 1998

Wiki | Video

1998 was, globally speaking, the year of the boyband. In the wake of the dissolution of British stalwarts Take That, a new generation of groups like the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Boyzone, Steps, 98º, and Westlife rushed in to fill the void. The pull of this rising global tide was felt in Latin pop as well — former boyband icon Ricky Martin established himself as a solo artist (not unlike Robbie Williams in the UK), and Servando y Florentino scored, Hanson-like, a solitary left-field #1 out of the Venezuelan pop-salsa scene.

Seventeen and sixteen respectively the week this song hit #1, Servando and Florentino Primera had been homeland heroes for several years already as the voices of La Orquesta Salserín, one of the primary competitors to Menudo throughout the Americas. Like Enrique Iglesias, they had a respectable pop lineage: their father, Alí Primera, had been one of the shining lights of Venezuelan nueva canción in the 60s and 70s; and like Marc Anthony, they stood by the relative authenticity of salsa despite their unabashedly pop profile.

Not that Marc Anthony had anything to worry about. "Una Fan Enamorada" ("a [female] fan in love") is very much boyband material, from the plushy pop-disco melody (recalling an earlier era of boyband, the Bee Gees) to the lyrics' apparently-sympathetic-but-on-examination-not-really portrait of their own fanbase. Such songs are always exercises in ego-stroking for the singers — even when they approach the tragic near-perfection of Eminem's "Stan," the unspoken premise is still how great the artist must be to inspire such cracked devotion in the first place. "Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."

And Servando and Florentino aren't quite up to even the relatively gentle rigors of the song. The highest reaches of the melody scrape against the limitations of their immature voices, and even the closest thing salsa has to a sure thing, the funky breakdown at the end, is rendered glib and pointless by their inability to riff convincingly. Like too many boybands, they were the sound of a season, and struggle to be heard to any great effect beyond.

RICARDO MONTANER, “QUISIERA”

3rd September, 1994

Wiki | Video

In the middle of the most exciting year Latin Pop has had since the chart started (and more wonders to come, or at least I'll think so), it's helpful to be reminded that some things are constant. This will be our last encounter with Ricardo Montaner (barring unexpected comebacks, of course), and he goes out as he came in, with a blustery, rather pompous ballad that gestures towards the dramaturgy of rock but ends only by overstaying its welcome.

"Quisiera" means, roughly, "I would wish" or "I could wish" (the imperfect subjunctive mood isn't available in modern English), and what he wishes is to hide the person addressed away in oblivion ("esconderte en olvido," i.e. to forget her); it's another self-dramatizing portrait of a love affair gone badly, and he claims to suffer from "delirio y mezclade hastío" (madness blended with boredom), for which the only cure is to consign her to the deep past, for centuries and centuries (no really! that's the chorus!) — that, it turns out, is what he would wish.

Well, I can only wish him well in his attempt to forget. His own appearances here have been pretty difficult to remember, so we're even; and besides, we're hurtling forward into fascinating territory, and we don't need undercooked power ballads dragging us down.

LOS FANTASMAS DEL CARIBE, “POR UNA LÁGRIMA”

11th December, 1993

Wiki | Video

Their second number-one hit off their first album, and if they show no sign of diminishing returns their combination of cumbia rhythms, synth keys and fey vocals was never all that astonishing in the first place. If anything, this melody is even more nursery-rhyme than that of their first entry, and the Casio presets even more goofy.

But their combination of tropical ritmos and electronic playfulness makes me think, unexpectedly, of the most futuristic Latin music I know today, the electro-cumbia propagated by the ZZK club and record label out of Buenos Aires, where sound sculptors from all over the world like Frikstailers and El Trip Selector fuse the urgent stasis of cumbia with up-to-the-minute glitch, microhouse, and acid electro, creating avant-garde dance music that still pulses with authentic heat. Los Fantasmas aren't trying todo anything so ambitious, of course; they're party music for parties without any low end, and they use electronic keyboards and drumpads more because, hey, it's 1993 than on any strict aesthetic grounds. But the joy in bringing out novel sounds and setting them against the old rhythm is the same.

The song is, if not a traditional one, then one that sounds traditional: "Por Una Lágrima" means "with one tear," and the singer is accusing his girl of crying false tears to cover up her unfaithfulness to him, a lover's complaint as ancient as love poetry itself. It doesn't at all match the bouncy music, but in a way that's a relief; we've had enough self-pitying ballads lately. Self-pitying dance music is much better.

LOS FANTASMAS DEL CARIBE, “MUCHACHA TRISTE”

12th June, 1993

Wiki | Video

Los Fantasmas Del Caribe, or The Ghosts Of The Caribbean, were a Venezuelan tropical outfit whose very first single was an unexpected dance hit throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This is that single.

"Muchacha Triste" means "sad girl," but the music doesn't dwell on her sadness. It's got a light synth-reggae beat — plus our first glimpse of a genre that will only grow in importance as we continue, cumbia (the chk-chka-chh triplets in the rhythm), and nothing can sound sad at that bouncy tempo. Anyway, the lyrics focus much more on the singer's swoony love for the muchacha triste, who is repeatedly encouraged to come give him a kiss, than on anything about her.

I'd call it an an evanescent, summery anthem if it didn't feel even too lightweight to be called an anthem. Despite being Venezuelan and therefore creditably Caribbean, it sounds almost British to me. The high, childish vocal melody reminds me of Scottish twee-pop, and the cod-reggae synthesizers with no discernable low end bring to mind Culture Club. But it contains the notes just on the edge of souring which marks working-class Latin pop, and if the voices are fey the funk is real. They dressed like pirates for a reason: George Clinton and Adam Ant must be acknowledged.

RICARDO MONTANER, “PIEL ADENTRO”

13th March, 1993

Wiki | Video

Ricardo Montaner continues his string of polished ballads that are far more erotic than they sound to an Anglophone. "Piel Adentro" means "skin inside" or "skin within" and a Google search turns up, besides this song, sex-and-dating sites.

But for all that, it's still as crashingly romantic as the music sounds. He's looking back on the sex as a metonymy for the relationship, and it apparently wasn't a good one — love turned to dust, he goes sleepwalking through it, the usual surprisingly specific images which are a feature of Latin Pop the way they very much aren't of Anglophone pop of the same breed and vintage.

Montaner has carved out a space for himself as a purveyor of primo ballads here in the early 90s; could he possibly challenge Luis Miguel, unquestionably the reigning champion of Latin ballads since the late 80s, for his throne? On this evidence, probably not; his voice deals capably with the big dramatic chord changes, but it doesn't do more than that. He doesn't have Miguel's gift for nuance or phrasing, and as the song crashes its way to a finish, he starts to sound winded, like a sprinter forced to run a steeplechase.

RICARDO MONTANER, “CASTILLO AZUL”

19th December, 1992

Wiki | Video

Ricardo Montaner made his first appearance in this travelogue with a power ballad of the Michael Bolton stripe; if this song's glassy, glossy keys and muscial-theater lift recalls instead Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle, that's surely not unintentional. Montaner sang the Peabo part in the Spanish-language version of Aladdin's "A Whole New World," "Un Mundo Ideal" with duet partner Michelle.

But this song sounds more like something out of (or inspired by) 1991's Beauty And The Beast. "Castillo Azul" literally means "blue castle," and the lyrics could be sung by a not-for-kids version of the Beast (or perhaps that other fairy-tale icon, Bluebeard) showing his new bride around the place. Not-for-kids because he goes adult very quickly; halfway through the first verse they're stripping off their clothes and by the lead-in to the chorus he's singing wistfully of "el momento pleno de hacernos sexo, a orillas del mesón." ("The fullness of the time we had sex in every corner of the place.") The imagery, in fact, is gorgeous, even intoxicating; a full translation would be a beautiful sample of erotic poetry, and is beyond my powers.

But of course little of that transcendent rush is conveyed in the music: formally, this is another bland, vacantly crescendoing ballad with almost no compensations for someone who doesn't understand the language. (Almost: the orgasmic rise and subtle funk guitar on the brief middle eight have their low-key pleasures.) And so we close out 1992 on a faintly disappointing note; so far it's the year I've liked the best as a whole — largely if not entirely thanks to Jon Secada — but there's more and better still awaiting us in the future.

JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ & JULIO IGLESIAS, “TORERO”

13th June, 1992

Wiki | Video

Here in the summer of 1992, the charts have at long last entered something of a groove, with song after song that interest and enthuse me, whether I actually like them or not. The opening bars to "Torero" are the kind of thing that will always put a smile on my face, flamenco flourishes over bolero rhythms, and José Luis Rodríguez being pushed by proximity to living legend Julio Iglesias to deliver a performance infused with the kind of graceful, assured masculinity that I'd bottle and spray on myself before going out if 'twere possible.

Masculinity, particularly the myths of masculinity which are very likely all there is to say about it, is very much the subject of this song, and it's worth spending some time thinking about the myths and figures of Latin masculinity in particular. It's no accident that the most extremely, even parodically, masculine figure at large in pop culture today, the guy in the Dos Equis commercials, speaks with a faint Spanish accent; even beyond the "Latin lover" stereotype (which can as easily encompass the gigolo as the bandito), there's a sort of subconscious sense in which Anglo-Americans believe that Latin men, with their machismo and fiery passions and earthy romanticism — I told you we would trade in myths — are naturally better at being men than Anglos, who are left to console themselves only with superior follicle density.

A torero, of course, is a bullfighter, the most masculine of professions according to that most masculinity-obsessed writer, Ernest Hemingway. Rodríguez and Iglesias use the image of the torero as a symbol of masculinity, one that's in danger of being lost and has to be reinforced. But since it's a pop song, sentiment comes first: like a bullfighter, a man must measure the distance to her heart, be brave and unguarded when he goes to steal a kiss, beware of the danger from her black eyes . . . . The metaphor is intrinsically sexist, of course — women aren't animals in need of tricking and taming — but it's a comfortably familiar one, and they sing it so well, that it's easy (at least for male-gendered me) for the space of the song to believe the myths and aspire to the tender, lordly masculinity their magical thinking creates.

RUDY LA SCALA, “POR QUÉ SERÁ”

9th November, 1991

Wiki | Video

As 1991 winds into its final innings — one of the shorter Latin Pop years so far, thanks to the massive "Todo, Todo, Todo" and two Ana Gabriel songs — Rudy La Scala returns for a second at-bat in as many years. I'm not sure if I've changed or he has, but I find this much outing much more enticing than the last; his overemotional quaver and androgynous voice read less like baffling stylization and more like a function of the overdramatized passions of what turn out, on inspection, to be standard Latin Pop lyrics about "amores prohibidos" (forbidden loves; remember that phrase) and generalized longing.

The title translates as "why must it be," and La Scala's litany of foreordained dooms and inevitable anguishes visited upon those unlucky enough to fall into amores prohibidos is nearly as hyperbolic as his overwrought vocal style. I'll no doubt expand on the theme in later entries, but for now remember that "forbidden love" didn't (and doesn't?) necessarily have the "love that dare not speak its name" connotations of LGBT convention for a Latin audience; for an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic culture, any non-marital amor is prohibido. Which might be why it's so much sung about.

FRANCO DE VITA, “NO BASTA”

30th March, 1991

Wiki | Video

This is our first real encounter with a phenomenon that will be with us for years to come, the middle-class attempt at a Serious Rock Statement. A quick overview of Latin American culture, unforgivably simplified, is probably in order here.

Most of the Latin Pop we've encountered so far has been descended from two traditions, which is really one tradition: folk music and show business. (The American equivalents would be blues/country/r&b and Tin Pan Alley/Broadway/Hollywood, respectively.) This is complicated by the fact that the Latin Pop industry encompasses two continents, several dozen countries, and innumerable local cultures; but the general principle, that Latin Pop is traditionally a vehicle for poor, working-class, and marginalized people to achieve wealth and fame and adoration even if only briefly, holds. (This is also true in American pop, from Jersey punk Sinatra and Tennessee hick Presley to blue-collar Madonna and white-trash Britney — pop is dominated by people who have a story of transcending their origins to tell.) In contrast, rock has been the music of middle-class respectability since at the latest 1967, and even more so in Latin America, where only the well-off have the resources to really get into American and European music. Despite what some will tell you, rock has never really been a international lingua franca, remaining a symbol of aspirational, and even elitist, cosmopolitanism while dance music and, more recently, hip-hop have been more solidly identified with the masses of any nation.

Which is probably several conclusions too many to draw from the fact that Franco De Vita sounds like he wants to be Billy Joel, up to and including the use of an American-style gospel choir for his Serious Statement Ballad. I call it a Serious Statement Ballad because it is; even if I didn't understand the words, the video would make it plain that this is hectoring pop in a "Cat's In The Cradle" mold. The title and two-word refrain translates as "it's not enough,"and the list of things which aren't enough — bringing them into the world out of obligation, taking them to school, buying them what they want you to buy them, blushing and running when they ask about sex, punishing them for being out late — adds up to a public service announcement to Talk To Your Children About Drugs And Bullying. It's all very middle class once more, and even if Latin culture was particularly in need of De Vita's message (Latin fathers are traditionally authoritarian and unapproachable, like all traditional fathers) the wussy piano-rock makes it clear exactly what strata of society it's being pitched to.

Someone like Ana Gabriel could have sung this song with a big synth-mariachi backing and been far more successful both politically and aesthetically; for Franco De Vita, it was his big moment in the spotlight, the highlight of an earnest singer-songwriter career, and the moment in the concert when all the lighters come out.

RUDY LA SCALA, “EL CARIÑO ES COMO UNA FLOR”

23rd June, 1990

Wiki | Video

One of the things about Latin Pop that doesn't strike the new listener as particularly reasonable on first delve is how many Italians there are all up in there. Italian isn't Spanish, as I learned the hard way inside a Roman electronics shop in 2000, and the influence of Italian culture in the Western hemisphere has mostly been limited, in the pop understanding of things, to the Eastern seaboard of the United States. But when you think about it from the point of view of an ambitious Italian pop star, it makes more sense; unless you're on the opera circuit, there's only so far you can go singing exclusively in Italian. The Spanish-language market is secondary only to the English-language market in terms of global reach, and it's the rare Italian pop act that doesn't try cutting amore down to amor at least once.

Not all of which totally applies to Rudy La Scala; he was born in Italy (and spent time in a progressive rock act there), but he's spent the bulk of his career operating out of Venezuela, where he worked on telenovelas, acted as svengali/producer for a number of up-and-coming pop stars (including Maria Conchita Alonso's Donna Summer period), and had a string of Latin-Pop hits on his own starting in 1990.

Starting here, in fact; which is as unlikely a pop hit as I've hard in some time. La Scala's unsteady, overwrought voice louder than anything else in the mix, lyrics which are lugubrious even by the standards of Latin Pop ballads*, and a production which seems to be aiming for the title of Dullest In Show all combine to create a car-wreck of a single which not only do I not like, I can't even begin to organize my thoughts around how anyone would like it. The best I can do is that he undoubtedly sounds like a guy who sang in a prog-rock band in the 70s; but not even Phil Collins fell this low.

*The title translates to "affection is like a flower," than which there could be no more idiotically trite sentiment.

RICARDO MONTANER, “LA CIMA DEL CIELO”

27th January, 1990

Wiki | Video

This sounds so perfectly 1990 to me — those slow-building, gospelly melodies were very much in vogue as the fabulous 1980s prepared for the earnest 90s — that I'm almost tempted to believe that its being The First Number One Of The 1990s is somehow significant. But it's just as much another entry in my theory of ballads belonging to the winter months.

It's also the first time an Argentinean singer has appeared at the top spot so far. (Montaner was born in Argentina but raised and achieved his first success in Venezuela.) Argentina is the richest and most powerful Spanish-speaking South American country, but partly because its cultural ties are closer to Spain than to the rest of Latin America, partly because of the lengthy Peron dictatorship, and partly because of a certain amount of cultural elitism, its pop culture hasn't necessarily been very popular throughout the rest of Latin America.

Montaner began, according to himself, as a black metal singer, but it was a series of baladas románticas that made him famous. You can, if you try very hard, hear a bit of rock vocal stylings here, but it's closer to the theatrical soul stylings of the post-Hair Broadway. Nevertheless it's an assured production, only a step or so removed from the Michael Bolton, Bryan Adams, and Richard Marx songs which were blanketing the English-speaking world at the same time.

JOSÉ LUIS RODRIGUEZ, “BAILA MI RUMBA”

14th July, 1989

Wiki | Video

This is the second extended dance song we've seen here, and while it's not quite as epic as Juan Gabriel's "Debo Hacerlo," it's the kind of song that if you don't like the sort of thing it's doing wears out its welcome very quickly. Luckily, I like the sort of thing it's doing. A lot.

It's also our first real encounter with Cuban music. Not that most modern Latin dance doesn't have some cubano in it somewhere -- the New Yorkers who invented salsa were all Cubans in exile -- but this tale has so far mostly focused on Mexican music at the expense of the Caribbean. But this song is far from entirely Cuban -- in addition to rumba, I can hear Trinidadian soca, the "Miami Sound," and of course the juddering beats of post-New Order British dance.

Rumba is often used as a generic term in Cuban music, and in the generic sense it bears the same general relationship to Cuban music as jazz does to American music, a black-originated, dance-based music that swiftly evolved into many disparate forms. But there are also specific rhythms and sounds that are unique to rumba as a music and a dance form: in the opening to this song, the piano plays rumba while the percussion is rather busier, evoking the southern Caribbean as much as the north.

Soca is to calypso what dancehall is to ska/rocksteady/reggae: a modernized, electronic update of an island music that isn't nearly as respected, musicology-wise, as its venerable ancestors. Which only means it's a living music, not having been trapped in amber by the killjoy curatorial instincts of the Hundred Best Ever listmaking set. (Among whom I of course count myself.) The hip-shaking jollity of the percussion, in fact, reminds me of no late 80s music so much as Buster Pointdexter's Latin-kitsch-and-the-kitchen-sink cover of "Hot, Hot, Hot," originally a soca hit by Monserratian singer Arrow.

But this song wasn't recorded in the Caribbean; though it fleshes out its curves with tropical signifiers, its throbbing spine moves with the sleek, violent precision of drug-glazed, neon-decadent Miami. Emilio Estefan, Gloria's husband and the ringleader of the Miami Sound Machine, co-produced it, and it is the clearest example we have yet seen of the impact new American pop music was having on the overall Latin scene. Those stiff jackhammer beats are like nothing we have heard before; and while neither José Luis Rodriguez, a soap opera actor taking a flier on an uptempo summer jam, nor his overly-sweet backing singers really have the vocal fire to match the banging music, it's still the party-heartiest number we've heard yet, the first song on this travelogue it wouldn't be impossible to imagine working into a DJ set today, provided the crowd was either callow or knowing enough to not hear it as Pointdexterian kitsch.

The lyrics barely matter, and he sings the back half in English anyway. Twenty years later, the only arresting words are a mondegreen: the backing girls sing "ritmo ritmo" (rhythm, rhythm), but it sounds a couple of times like "Gitmo ritmo," which has a whole lot of other, entirely unintended connotations; but it made me realize where I'd heard those jacking beats before. Of course! Paul Hardcastle's "19."

JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ, “Y TÚ TAMBIÉN LLORARÁS”

28th November, 1987

Wiki | Video

Probably the easiest way to become convinced of Julio Iglesias' supremacy in the art of romantic Latin ballad singing is to listen to the imitators that come nowhere close. Which isn't to say that this sweeping entry in the romantic-ballad sweepstaks of late 1987 is terrible; it's just not up to the contemporary standard of Iglesias, which as the past several entries have shown is frankly pretty damn high.

Rodríguez is the first of our company to hail from South America: born in Venezuela, where his relatively poor family was involved in dangerous political activities during the 1950s, he moved around a lot and went without formal schooling, teaching himself music and stagecraft. With hit songs and commercials, he became a local star in the 1970s, and eager for more, moved to Puerto Rico, one of the hotbeds of Spanish-language pop-culture production. He was cast in two immensely successful telenovelas (Cristina Bazán and El ídolo), the latter of which gave him the nickname "El Puma," and began to have enough hit records that he was invited to participate in the Latin Pop version of "We Are The World" in 1985, "Cantaré, Cantarás." Other participants familiar to the readership of this blog include Braulio, Emmanuel, Julio Iglesias, and José José; the full list is here.

"Cantaré, Cantarás" was written by Albert Hammond — the "It Never Rains In Southern California" guy (and father of a Stroke) — who mostly spent the 80s working in Latin Pop, where his talent for big, heartstring-tugging ballads was more widely appreciated than in the Anglophone pop world at the time. (A Gibraltarian, he's fluent in both Spanish and English.) He and José Luis Rodríguez must have gotten along, because two years later he wrote and produced the album Señor Corazón for him, from which "Y Tú También Llorarás" ("and you too will weep") was drawn, becoming Rodríguez' biggest ballad hit of the late 80s.

Hammond's lyrics aren't a patch on Manuel Alejandro's poetic, refractory stuff for Iglesias, but they have their own emotional appeal: the big swooping chorus goes "And you too will weep/For what could not be/Was a torrent of love/That we threw away/You will return to feeling/Like a teenager again/Anxious to arrive/In time for our rendezvous," which turns in the final chorus to "You will never arrive/In time for our rendezvous/It's too late."

It's worth noting that the mid-80s production with which we started out this trip has mostly fallen by the wayside: although the keyboards here are extremely plastic, they have a sonic depth and sustain that's a world away from the tinny production on "La Guirnalda." The balladic 90s (which is when I first became aware of contemporary pop) are within hailing view from this height. Of course, we still have two more years to go before we get there. What's 1988 got for us?