Don’t Stay Up Too Late.

22nd September, 1987

Get used to that name; we’ll be seeing it regularly from here on out. In fact Luis Miguel makes an excellent case study in the evolution (maturation? commercialization?) of Latin Pop: his career mirrors the trajectory of the time period we are covering. Of course Latin Pop has existed for decades before this, but it tended towards parochialism and regionalism: the gooey embrace of transglobal pop stardom is something new, and Miguel is one of its key players.

We meet him for the first time here, at the age of seventeen. He has been in show business for most of his life, scoring his first hit record when he was eleven. (Shades of another child star turned leading light of the global pop overground.) He has just fired his father as his manager and signed on with Spanish pop empresario Juan Carlos Calderón. A standard hitmaking formula is brought to bear, with excellent results: a number-one song, which will give way twice to Julio Iglesias and once to — but that’d be telling. It’s a bumptious dance song, funky in that mid-80s cheap keyboard bass way, with a sax solo that dates it as surely and minutely as counting tree rings. And you know the song.

You probably don’t know it as “Ahora Te Puedes Marchar,” because the original English title of the song was not “Now You Can Leave.” It was “I Only Want To Be With You,” and it was first released by Dusty Springfield in November 1963, her first single after leaving folk group The Springfields, and the third British-Invasion hit in the US. Ivor Raymonde’s billowy Swinging London production is swapped out for a sub-Huey Lewis go-go, and Mike Hawker’s giddy lyrics about new love are refashioned into a don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out anthem (directed at Miguel’s money-mismanaging father?), but the giddiness remains. Miguel sounds downright gleeful to be singing this song, to be on his own, to be making modern dance music out of classic pop.

Most of the album from which “Ahora Te Puedes Marchar” was drawn is taken up with modernized covers of pop songs from the sixties and seventies — “Reach Out,” “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me,” “Only You,” “All By Myself” — and given a glossy 80s sheen. It’s very much, even designedly, a disposable teen-pop record; Miguel is only seventeen, and his pouty lips on the album cover don’t invite us to expect much more. But you can hear a bit into the future: he has a fine, strong cock’s crow of a voice, he’s good with rhythm, and he’s interested in raiding the closet of history to enhance his own throbbing good looks.

He will come to be called the Frank Sinatra of Latin music; but as of right now, Michael Jackson is the far better comparison. If Jackson had been born in Puerto Rico ten years later than he was, this — triumphalist, a little cutting, and interestingly sexually ambiguous in terms of who his forebears are — might well be the record he’d have made in 1987.

6th June, 1987

There are three emotional cycles I went through on encountering this song, over the several listens it has taken me to assimilate it. As best as I can reconstruct them, they are:

1. Goodness, you can tell without looking that whoever sings this is a Star.

2. Nevertheless it is like the most boring drippy ballad evar.

3. Holy shit these lyrics are amazing.

Julio Iglesias is the first name I’ve encountered on this journey that I know I’ve heard before beginning it. (The only other challenger, Juan Gabriel, is a more doubtful case; I might have heard of him, but it’s kind of a generic name). He is, to put it in as offensively reductive a manner as possible, real-world famous in addition to being Latin Pop famous, and in 1987 had been so for nearly a decade, a man who had breached the Top Ten in the company of Willie Nelson (of all people), who titled an album after the home he subsequently sold to Quincy Jones, who even went to number one in the UK — and it was the Popular crew’s discussion of that number one, with its predictable reliance on the British institution of continental package tours as the only lens through which Latin music makes any sense, that first gave me the small inkling of a desire to tackle a project like this, and talk about Latin music from a provincial, blinkered Americanstandpoint.

And here he sounds like the megastar he is, with the most expensive-sounding production we’ve encountered to date. Listen to it on headphones and marvel at the miles of room in it, with guitars and keyboards and drums and harp and accordion separated out in a mix that creates a soft, glossy pillow for his golden, infinitely tender voice. We’ve been talking about vocal styles here, perhaps somewhat incoherently; but if Iglesias doesn’t have the greatest voice from a technical standpoint, he’s a master at deploying his cracked baritone to the maximum emotional and sensual effect. (I’d compare it to Neil Diamond again, but only because pop singers who sound like men are so rare in American pop that he’s about the only game in town; and Iglesias is way better than Neil Diamond.)

But after marveling at the surface effect of the song’s presentation of That Voice (you couldn’t possibly have a production like this for an unknown singer, it would be laughed out of court), I grew restless; it was a slow song, a ballad, and repetitive as all hell. I caught fragments of the lyrics, but my Spanish is Central American vernacular (I’m still not used to Castilian pronunciation), and what I did catch didn’t impress me; the phrase repeated at the beginning of each verse translates dully as “You were mine, only mine; mine, mine.” I’ve never liked ballads on first acquaintance, and even today it’s rare for one to push through my low attention span to really get across to me.

But then I looked up the lyrics — as I do for every song here, to check them against my ear — and translated them on the fly, and sat staring. They couldn’t possibly be that poetic! I looked up the words I was uncertain of. No; they were even more poetic than that.

Manuel Alejandro, the song’s composer, has been one of the premier ballad composers in Latin music since the 1960s, and he’s worked with Julio Iglesias since the early 70s. Un Hombre Solo, the smash hit record from which “Lo Mejor De Tu Vida” (“the best [years] of your life”) was taken, was entirely written and produced by Alejandro. His lyrical style is highly romantic, even extravagant, and I’m still a bit puzzled by at least one metaphor (is “colina cerrada” an idiomatic phrase in some version of vernacular Spanish? its literal translation, “closed hill,” defeats my powers of analysis), but his choice of a simple, even basic, structure allied to vivid, poetically-expressed imagery is inspired: the result is a song with a folk-like structure but layered with a patina of García Lorca-like lyricism.

And all this is without getting into the meaning of the lyrics. He sounds tender, but there’s an undercurrent of possessiveness, of predation, even of coercion, that mitigates against the common image of Iglesias as some kind of standard “passionate but honorable” Latin lover. But it’s also more than just a rape fantasy; there’s genuine emotion (sorrow? regret? revulsion?) in his performance. I don’t rate these songs (I don’t as a rule believe in ratings), but this is thegreatest song, in whatever sense of the word you choose to apply, that we’ve had yet.

My translation of the lyric follows; let me know if I’ve gotten something wrong. Also, please let me know if you’d like me to include such translations from here on out. I’d most likely be doing the work anyway; would it be useful enough to you that the additional scrolling is worth it? The comments box works.

THE BEST YEARS OF YOUR LIFE

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your skin was fresh
Like dewy grass

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your mouth and eyes
Overflowed with youth

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your maiden’s lips
First encountered mine

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your womb was still
An unopened hill

The best years of your life
I have carried away
The best years of your life
I have enjoyed

Your first experience
The awakening of your flesh
Your savage innocence
I have drunk it all
I have drunk it all

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your body was the shoot
Of a newly-planted palm

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When you barely closed your eyes
I stole in close beside you

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your hands trembled
If they were only touched

You were mine
Only mine
Mine, all mine
When your yesterday did not exist
And you thought only of tomorrow

The best years of your life
I have carried away
The best years of your life
I have enjoyed

Your first experience
The awakening of your flesh
Your savage innocence
I have drunk it all
I have drunk it all

25th April, 1987

As is no doubt dishearteningly obvious, I’ve been relying on Wikipedia and half-assed Google searches for my information about the performers that have so far marched down this particular side-street Colonnade of Fame. The trouble with that kind of overreliance is obvious: when Wikipedia fails you, you fail.

So all I know about Braulio García is that he is a Spanish national born in the Canary Islands, that his Wikipedia Español page reads like it was written by his publicist, that his career began in 1971, and that this was his only significant brush with the Billboard Latin chart. Extrapolating from the cover art, he was entering middle age and trying to feel sexy about it; extrapolating from the vocal style he employs on this song, he was a singer not unlike José José.

Except that he doesn’t have the precision or control that José does; in fact he reminds me of nothing so much as those country singers with “good” voices, like Eddy Arnold or George Jones, who could have crooned with as much velvet intensity as Sinatra or Nat Cole but preferred to remain in the C&W “ghetto.” Braulio’s vocal style hints at the emotional extravagance that Latin song from flamenco to mariachi (and this particular pop song splits the difference, as far as one can hear under a production that sounds like Miami updating Bacharach) tends towards, but his touch is light. Like Rocío Dúrcal, he’s holding back in favor of the pop moment.
Or maybe I’m reminded of country singers because it’s such a country song: “En Bancarrota” means “in bankruptcy,” and the lyric is an extended conceit in which his love history is related in terms of finance and banking. In English, it would be a comedy song — puns are usually discouraged in pop this side of Elvis Costello — but here it’s simply an appropriate metaphor. His balance is in the red, the account he opened is bottomless/without funds (a pun on fondo), she gave him a “mala nota” (a triple pun; it could be translated “bad check,” “bad grade,” or “bad [musical] note,” and the airbrushed female singers who come in after the line live up to it).

Again, this is mom (or dad) music, not pop in the sense that we think of it today: it’s corny, sentimental, and graceful; it doesn’t move. It’s interesting to note how much these early charts are dominated by singers from Spain; it’s my impression (but we’ll see) that the western hemisphere will nearly shut the eastern out as the decades pass. I’m a little wary of drawing any comparisons with other former-colonial relationships; we’ll just let the idea lie for now.

28th March, 1987

Why do I put “pop idol” in the categories field when Emmanuel comes up in the draw? This song illustrates why: it’s the first song we’ve had here at the top of the Billboard Latin chart that sounds like the 1980s of myth and snark: completely synthesized, airbrushed, and blow-dried. To ears immersed in UK synth-pop, it may sound more 1982 than 1987; but a cursory Google search turns up the fact that it’s appeared on a budget Italo Disco compilation, and that nails the sound and aesthetic so precisely that I’m left wondering why I hadn’t thought of it. This isn’t Anglo pop, it’s Euro.

Which is a useful reminder that, though the Billboard chart doesn’t always necessarily reflect it, being focused on American Latin sales & radio (again, as distinct from Latin American sales & radio), that much of Latin America has closer cultural ties with Europe than Americans of the estadounidense stripe would expect. Spain and Portugal for obvious historic reasons; but Italian pop has always had a strong showing in the market as well, and French, Greek, and various Scandinavian acts have also done well in the American continents south of the Rio Grande. Italo disco – pop based on the Giorgio Moroder template – was the basic lingua franca of international pop in the 1980s and into the 90s; and the only thing particularly Mexican about Emmanuel here is his accent.

It’s not a particularly Mexican accent; I don’t mean that a listener in Barcelona would hear it the way a Londoner hears a Texas twang. It’s Standard Showbiz Spanish, the “accentless” accent that corresponds to the American English television announcer’s dialect, most strongly associated with California. Though if Emmanuel sounds like anyone American, he sounds like New Yorker Neil Diamond, a faint theatrical grit over a showman’s bellow.

It’s a slight irony that Emmanuel, with his manly croon, achieves effortlessly and (as it were) accidentally, what many of the New Pop chancers of five years previous were attempting: a sophisticated, elegant vocal over a sleek, throbbing synthetic sound. (In the attempt, many of them redefined sophisticated, elegant vocals. But no one thinks Phil Oakey or David Sylvain sounded like Sinatra.)

The song itself isn’t particularly notable, or not nearly as notable as its arrangement: a standard love song (the title translates to “she is my woman,” though from context he’s singing “you are my woman”). The only minor point of interest is when he plays with the meaning of the verb “querer.” “Te quiero,” he sings, meaning “I love you,” and then after a pause, adds “tener,” which changes the meaning of the entire phrase to “I want to have you.” Which is a cute, sexy anti-romantic gesture, but Doug Kihn or Corey Hart could have done as well. (They could also have had the same backing track, come to think of it.)

But speaking of the lyrics, this is also the first record we’ve met that an American’s (as in United States of) name is associated with. Co-writer K. C. Porter isn’t necessarily a household name even in the Miami and Los Angeles circles where he works, but his songwriting and production talents did well by Selena and Ricky Martin, to name only two major figures we’ll be meeting along the way. Seeds planted for the future; for now, just admire the totally-vanished aesthetic.

20th December, 1986

This is an epochal moment in Hot Latin history: the first time that a song associated with a telenovela has topped the chart. The telenovela in question, El Camino Secreto, starred Daniela Romo in her breakout role as — well, the details hardly matter. I haven’t seen it and neither have you (unless you have, in which case feel free to enlighten us all), but word on the Internet is that El Camino Secreto (lit. “the secret road”) was extraordinarily popular as 1986 came to a close, and made Romo a star.

She had been a jobbing Mexican pop singer since the late 70s (her biggest influence was apparently Rocío Dúrcal, to bring our abbreviated version of 1986 full circle), and had had the occasional hit, but it was this song, this telenovela, and this album, “Mujer De Todos, Mujer De Nadie” (“everybody’s woman, nobody’s woman”), which, coming all together at once and reinforcing each other with a consistent vision of a woman in love aching for the object of her love to turn to her, created a potent pop symbolism around Romo, which she parlayed into long-term balladic success in the decade to come.

Her own biography reads a bit like the plot of a telenovela: the poor-but-beautiful daughter of unmarried parents, raised by her grandmother on the mean streets of Mexico City, idolizing a famous Spanish singer/actress, and slowly, agonizingly, achieving her dream of being a famous singer/actress herself. “De Mí Enamórate” (“fall in love with me”) represents the happy finale of the story, in which the biggest pop star in the Latin universe, Juan Gabriel, presents her with a suitably dramatic song to sing over the credits of her very own telenovela.

Of the six songs which topped the Billboard Latin charts in 1986, half were written by Juan Gabriel; and this might be the best of them. Romo’s ability to switch from the delicate sigh of the verses to the all-out foghorn of the chorus, then chirp the dancy post-chorus breakdown ties the frankly schizophrenic arrangement together. Structurally, it’s not very different from “Yo No Sé Qué Me Pasó” — two verses, a superlong chorus, then repeat the second verse and the chorus, and fade, but Gabriel’s instinct for flamboyant dramatics comes alive in the stunning three-octave climb which opens the chorus. In pop terms, it’s a “defining moment,” like the pause in Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” before she comes crashing in again with “AND IIIIIEEIIII, etc.” Much as producers salivate over such moments, they’re vanishingly rare in practice — so it’s no surprise that Romo’s performance set a standard for the Hot Latin charts which is still difficult to match; she was the first performer to spend fourteen weeks on top, and this song is still tied for sixth place in the length of its stay at number one.

Lyrically, it retains Gabriel’s (and, let’s be frank, Mexican pop’s) tendency towards flamboyant all-or-nothing statements. The repeated verse translates: “Since I saw you/I’ve lost my identity/In my head lives/Only you and no one else/And it hurts me to think/That you will never be mine/Fall in love with me.” The enormous shift of the chorus, though, functions as a counterweight: the lyrics move into the future tense, and she dreams of the epic perfection that mutual love will be. The majestic, soundtracky sweep of the chorus works for lines like “The day you love me I will be happy/And with pure love I will protect you/It will be an honor to dedicate myself to you/As God desires.” The post-chorus breakdown, with its funky synth drops, only repeats the sentiment in an easy glide: “When you fall in love/With my love/I will at last/See the light for once.”

It’s that funky, cheery breakdown that sticks in the head, rather than the bombastic swell of the chorus. Perfect for a credits sequence easing us into the action. Y aquí viene Gabriela y su amor David; ¿cómo se harán este semana? . . .