60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Macarena”—Los del Rio

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Rob looks back at the meteoric rise of “Macarena” and the song’s ability to get politicians to make a fool of themselves. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Leila Cobo Producers: Justin Sayles and Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. A quick announcement before this week's episode. The announcement is that 60 songs that explain the 90s will be doing 120 songs. We are doing 30 more songs. There's too many songs, so we're doing more songs. Also, this is a great bit that we have stumbled on this arbitrary adding of songs, and who are we to turn our back? on a great bit. This episode brings us to 88 songs. We have two more to get to 90. Then we'll be taking a break for two months, but returning promptly on May 3rd, 2023. I got a schedule going. It's very organized and soothing Google Doc. This is going to be it. 120 songs is going to be it. I said this is going to be it last time when we jumped to 90. You don't believe me this time. I don't blame you. That's fine. Hear me now and believe me later. We will stop. at 120 songs. They will kill me if we don't stop the show at that point. Many thanks to Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessee, Mallory Rubin, Juliet, Litman, Amanda Dobbins, and the rest of the ringer crew for not killing me yet. This extension will take us pretty much exactly to the end of 2023, and then we will find something else to do with ourselves. But I'm tremendously excited to keep this show going, and I'm eternally grateful to everyone who listens. I am so grateful for all the tweets and DMs and emails, even the one sassing me about my pronunciation, and especially the drunk ones. Bonus points for you

announce if you're drunk in your message, but honestly, I can always tell. Thank you so much to everyone for listening, for reaching out, for spreading the word, for your enthusiasm, for your sass. I am having a great time, and I'm very psyched that I get to have a great time for a little longer. Conclusion. 60 songs that explain in the 90s will be expanding at 120 songs and then stopping. I mean it this time. We got two more songs to go. Then we'll take a break. Then we'll be back. Thank you for listening. I'm serious about all of it. Okay. Thank you. You know what? Fuck it. Listen, we can all sit around dreading this for the next 45 minutes, or we can get it out of the way. August 26, 1996, Chicago, Illinois, the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls. The Democratic National Convention begins. This description will be brisk.

Four days of righteous speechifying and awkward revelry. Your Democratic presidential nominee is Bill Clinton. seeking re-election having prevailed in 1992. Spoiler alert, he will handily prevail in November 96 as well, defeating Republican Bob Dole, along with spunky third-party candidate and galaxy-brained visual aid enthusiast Ross Perrault. The Bulls won the NBA title that year,

beating out the Seattle Supersonics. Bill Clinton is Michael Jordan, and Bob Dole is Sonic's point guard, Gary Payton. And Perrault is, I don't know, Sonic's big man, Detliff, Shremf. That analogy needs some work. Clinton's victory feels preordained.

All right. The vibe at the DNC in Chicago as summer ends is therefore boisterous. There is an incumbent cockiness, a raucousness, a jovial sloppiness, a semi-charismatic complacency. It is not mourning in America. That was Reagan's whole deal. But it is, perhaps, brunch in America. I said this would be brisk. They dance the fucking macarena.

Okay, infamously. And this infamous video footage of various power brokers and luminaries at the 1996 DNC dancing the macarena, to put it mildly and briskly, this footage is unpleasant to look upon. This video is all over YouTube. Of course, my favorite upload of this clip

is entitled simply the 1996 DNC was lit. Brisk. Nero all line dancing as Rome burns. Jesus, I'm so glad they got the Anne Bancroft clip from the graduate in there. I'm not trying to seduce you blaring over the PA at the DNC as Bill Clinton seeks re-election. That's stupendous. Brisk. Brisk, there she is. Bill's doning wife, Hillary Rodham, Clinton, beaming, radiant, clapping, and pointedly, and if you want the truth wisely, not even trying to do the dance. She looks genuinely happy. She looks relatively carefree. I said brisk. There they are. Various Democratic big shots and randos alike. On stage and off, comfortable and less comfortable, coordinated and not doing the fucking macarena, doing the dance. You know the dance. Our dear friend,

the author and critic Tom Bryan, writing in his stereo gum column, the number ones, he writes, You didn't need much sense of rhythm to do the macarena. You didn't need to do the macarena. You didn't need remember too many steps. You simply had to be aware of the location of your chest, head, and butt, and you needed to be able to put your hands on those parts in sequence. Few dance crazes are quite so undemanding." End quote. That's why Tom's the best. Not everybody at the DNC is up to even that challenge, of course. There's a white-haired, rumpled-suited older gentleman. He's on screen for like three seconds, but he's clearly got no idea where his chest head and butt are. He's just grasping wildly at various parts of his body.

If the camera had stayed on him for even 10 seconds longer, we probably could have watched him basically strangle himself. Brisk, it's awkward, dude. It is lit but also cringe. It is a cursed visual document. It's like the killer videotape in the ring if the scary girl in the well had signed the 1994 crime bill. This footage is unpleasant to look upon.

Don't go watch it now. even as a joke. Don't do it. Don't. No. Quit it. There is incumbent Vice President Al Gore. Sometime later, kicking off his own righteous DNC speech with a little joke. This is some crowd. I've been watching you doing that macarena on television.

I said we're getting this out of the way and I meant it. I said this description will be brisk and I tried. And if I could do that, have your silence, I would like to demonstrate for you, the Al Gore version of the Macarena. And then he stands there motionless and unsmiling, because Al Gore is famously stiff and rhythmically challenged and humorless. It's a self-aware little joke there. We got it out of the way. Head, head, shoulder, shoulder, side, side, butt, butt, switch. swish then turn.

Got it. Got it! Oprah. Oprah learning the dance on the beach with three swole, shirtless lifeguards, and then teaching the dance to her raucous and sloppy studio audience. And her audience starts clapping off beats immediately, and yet overall this footage is significantly more pleasant to look upon. If only because other than Oprah herself,

none of these people are trying to run the country. Well, boxed the stadium and I think we broke the record here. Macarena night. Yankee Stadium. 50,000 Yankee fans doing the Macarena, setting the record, apparently, for the most people doing the Macarena. A record very recently set by a crowd at the Kingdom in Seattle at a Mariners game. Seattle just getting their asses kicked to left, right and center in 1996.

We even got the Yankees' ground crew. crew doing the macarena and doing it quite well in fact although as a crew member named brian cooney explained to the associated press quote we rehearsed for about six hours i think we got it down pretty good and quote six hours six hours defied your butt brian that better have been a little joke if you believe youtube commenters and why not macaena night at yankee stadium was also sock night, commemorative sock night, and dudes in the upper deck

started throwing balled up socks on the field. Quite a memorable evening at Yankee Stadium overall. The Mariners beat the Yankee 65, so suck it. Some of those sock throwers kind of were running the country at that point, I suspect. Atlanta,

Georgia, the 1996 Olympics, the gymnastics Gala, the 1996 United States women's gymnastic team, the magnificent seven, gold medalists, American heroes, celebrating their victory and cutting loose with a little dance medley. YMCA, great addition to that medley, sure, but we all know it's coming. We got Olympic legend Carrie Strug. She did the famous vault with a busted ankle to win gold. Carrie Struggs out there in an ankle brace doing the mock arena.

The U.S. women's gymnastic team's version of the macarena dance includes a standing backflip. Do not try that at home or at Yankee Stadium or anywhere. Everybody's into the macarena. Everybody except this guy. This gentleman is named MC Rage based in Las Vegas. he's a hardcore guy, as in the dance music genre, not hardcore punk or hardcore the lifestyle. I'm getting major proto Pete Davidson vibes off MC Rage.

That's neither a compliment nor an insult. That's a value-neutral Pete Davidson comparison. Anyway, fuck Macarena is one of MC Rage's most prominent musical contributions to society. And I suspect the Yankee Stadium grounds crew spent more time learning to do the dance than he spent writing the song. Gabba, they call me macaroni, and the girls say my dig's so bony. They don't want me, they laugh at me, and they come and throw up beside me. All right, that's enough of that.

What's going on here? Not what's going on with MC Rage. I've got the gist, I think, of that guy. I mean, what's going on in general? I have a friend, my dear friend Tommy, who gets super pissed whenever anyone uses the phrase, the monoculture, to describe the way culture used to work pre-interested. internet pre severe audience fragmentation back when we all had three tv channels and the same five movies and theaters at any given time when we all used to listen to the same things watch the same

things like the same things jaws star wars mash thriller johnny carson sinfeld avengers end game of thrones etc the monoculture is dead now pretty much my buddy tommy hates it when people use the term monoculture like that he starts ranting about how monoculture is about farming and crop rotation and shit. I kind of got to tune him out at that point. It's pretty aggressive. But the macarena in 1995 and 1996 did feel monocultural in the inaccurate sense of the term.

If you want the truth, it felt viral, as in of the nature of caused by or relating to a virus. I don't mean viral as a compliment or an insult either. I mean viral in the value-neutral sense. Back in 2021, Spin Magazine wrote about Macarena and quoted Professor Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Blyer Center for Television and Popular Culture, and Robert says, were we to anoint one song as the official anthem of the end of the second millennium, Macarena would do very nicely, slouching toward Y2K,

with Napster and the iPod working just around the corner, we met this timeless oddment as the analog century was slipping away, end quote. That's one way to put it. Sorry, motherfucker, just dance the macarena. Could it be that everybody's got that kind of insane. Everybody yeah, but hates the macarena. Fuck the macarena. I said that's enough. MC Rage, thank you for your service. Take the rest of the day off. So the music journalist and Billboard magazine editor Layla Kobo will be talking to her later. Lela wrote a great book called Decoding Despacito in oral history of Latin music. 19 chapters, each about a different massive Latin pop hit from Feliz Navidad to Rosalia.

Macarena gets a chapter, of course, and there's a scene where a Miami radio DJ named Jamminjani Corrida, he's DJing live at a club in Miami. He's there with his program director at the influential radio station Power 96, and he's trying to convince his boss that they should play macarena on the radio, even though the current remix version is all in Spanish, because every time he puts the song on in the club, everyone starts line dancing immediately. So Johnny says, quote, and I play the song again, and the same thing happens. It was like the boobonic plague. The dance floor clears out. People fall in line like an army, and they start to do that little dance. The ones who didn't know it, they learn it on the spot and the boss looks at me and says,

what the hell was that? That is a value neutral reference to the bubonic plague. I think my name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 88th episode of 60 songs that explain the 90s and it's time. Yes, it is time to deal with Marlera, Macarena, macarena, Macarena. But that's time to deal with Macarena.

Ah, Yes, it is time to deal with Macarena by the Spanish pop duo Loz del Rio. The song originally hailing from their 1993 album, Ami Me Gusta, but that's not the famous version. And overall, the chronology gets out of hand super fast. The timeline and the guest list,

the shit gets bonkers, dude. All right. All right. The category is a, remixes that overpower the original versions. Let's start with this lady. This lady, of course, is known professionally as Robin S. She's born and raised in Queens, New York. Her father was a singer and a boxer. He boxed under the name Stonewall Jackson. That's a great boxer name. And as a singer herself in tribute, she calls herself Robin Stone at first. But that ain't going to stick. Her debut

single, Show Me Love, comes out in 1990, and this version of the song ain't going to stick either. The original Show Me Love was written by Alan George and Fred McFarlane. Writing in the New York Times in 2022, the great blogger and critic Rich Joswiak says, The production was disco-inflicted and conventional, as was typical for that period of house music. And when it was released in 1990, it went precisely nowhere. End quote. Enter a young Swedish producer known as Stonebridge, one word, no relation, whose remix of Show Me Love emerges in 1993 and turns the song into a dance pop colossus

worthy of being written about in the New York Times like 30 years later. And this, of course, is the canonical version that will be lovingly referenced at the very least by the likes of Beyonce and Charlie XX in 2022. In that Times article, a former Billboard editor named Larry Flick says that show me love has probably become the most ubiquitous dance song in modern history. But this version of Show Me Love, right? You need that super bouncy keyboard. To play that keyboard line correctly,

you can't use your hands. You have to throw those little blue rubber balls at the keyboard from a great height, like you're the halftime entertainer at an NBA game. Robin S sings the hell out of Show Me Love. She had the flu when she sang it. I do believe the flu is audible in her voice. This song is a duet between Robin S and the flu. Post Beyonce talking to Vulture about recording Show Me Love, Robin says, I did not want to do that song over again. I just wanted to sing it and go back and lie down. She goes on, so the emotions that appear in the song, it was actually me trying to sustain notes and me trying to stay alive and breathe at the same time. End quote. Yeah, Robin S sings the hell out of it, but it's not show me love until you get that rad keyboard line.

Astounding vocal performance by her and the flu beneath that keyboard. Fun fact, when the Show Me Love remix gets sampled or interpolated or lovingly referenced now, the original songwriters get paid, but Stonebridge, the remixer, does not, because he's not credited as a songwriter, even though musically, it's invariably the keyboard sound that's getting lovingly referenced. Sometimes somebody gets boned when a remix blows up like this. Make a note of it. Moving on now to this lady.

I am sitting in the morning at the diner on the corner. I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee. This lady, of course, is the great singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, born in Santa Monica, California, but grew up in New York City and Spanish Harlem. This is Tom's Diner. The first track on her 1987 album, Solitude Standing. It's Acapella. It's a little over two minutes long.

She gets some coffee, that's about it. And the most important part happens during the fade out. And then out of nowhere, two English dudes calling themselves DNA dropping a dance beat from a soul-to-soul song without Suzanne Vega's knowledge, and they pass the bootleg around. And suddenly, in 1990, Tom's diner is a super. weird top five pop hit in America about a lady getting a cup of coffee. This song actually went to number two in England. Nick Batts, one of the dudes in DNA, told the Guardian, we were only kept off number one by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

There's something so poignant about that. Just to clarify, and this is tremendously important, he's not talking about Vanilla Ice's ninja rap from the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. That was 1991. He's talking about turtle power by the New York City rap duo Partners in Crime. Crime is spelled K-R-Y-M-E. And yeah, this was the number one song in England for a month. Just a fascinating country, England.

Somebody really ought to look into England. Yeah, so DNA added some hornstabs and a subtler but also quite rad and essential keyboard line to Tom's Diner. mind telling you that I vibed in quite a melancholy way with that keyboard line when I was 12. Suzanne Vega dug this remix that all worked out money-wise. Nobody got bone this time. Thank goodness. Moving on now to this lady. This lady, of course, is the stupendous ultra laid-back dance floor diva Tracy Thorne, who along with her eventual husband, Ben Watt, make up the beloved English pop duo Everything But the Girl. This song is called Missing.

The original appeared on the group's eighth album Amplified Heart released in 1994. Tracy and Ben have been romantically involved pretty much the whole time, but finally announced their marriage in 2009. That remains one of my all-time favorite marriage announcements, mostly because it included the line. A 27-year engagement may seem cautious to some of you, but I think in these uncertain times, it is well to be sure of someone before you make any rash commitments, end quote.

I love them so much. As for Miss You, lovely song, but it doesn't truly become Miss You until the Deified Brooklyn house producer Todd Terry gets a hold of it. And just like that, the Todd Terry Remakes of Missing is a number two pop hit in America, only kept off number one by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That's not true. Unfortunately, it was Mariah Carey and Boys to Men. One Sweet Day, that's too bad. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would have been way funnier. The keyboards on the missing remix, to my mind, they combine the melancholy of the Tom's Diner remix

with the half-time show bouncing ball hookiness of the Show Me Love remix. Do you find these examples or the non-teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-based examples to be a little too relevant to the conversation at hand about random songs with remixes that randomly blew up on the pop charts? Are these examples not weird and digressive and uncomfortably? personal to me enough. I agree. One more. Moving on out of this guy. This guy, of course, is Robert Smith leading his god-tier goth rock band, The Cure. This song is called A Forest from their second album, 17 Seconds, released in 1980. Look up that video for a forest sometime, would you? Robert Smith is not yet the wild-eyed, super-goth, emotions hair icon you know in love. He's clean-shaven. He's

relatively normal looking. He's got this painstakingly blank facial expression. And he looks like Ed Helms from the office, if you want the truth about that. England, it's a fascinating country. A forest is a great song. Not a huge pop hit, but the original version of a forest is the vastly preferred version of a forest, but not by me. This is the tree mix of a forest. That's clever. from the Cura's 1990 remix album called Mixed Up. I heard this version once on alt rock radio when I was 12 or so, and I vibed with it in an ultra intense and melancholy way. An all-time Rob listening to the radio moment.

I, too, was clean cut with a painstakingly blank facial expression, but I grew emotion's hair just listening to this. I will never forget this song as long as I live. This keyboard line, the most maudlin bouncing ball keyboard line imaginable. This song is the halftime entertainment when the home team is down by 75 points at the half. This keyboard line is permanently humming in the background of my day-to-day life. Well, that was weird. Awesome.

I feel better. All right. All right. Moving on now to these guys. This song is called De La Feria del Rousseo. It came out in Spain in 1971. It's by Los Del Rio. Antonio Romero and Raphael Ruiz were both 14 years old when they formed the duo Los

Del Rio, meaning those from the river, in the city of Dos Hermannas in Spain in 1962. Yo! Los Del Rio formed the year before. the first Beatles record came out. Los Del Rio put out records for 30 years. That's how this story starts. Also, the Los Del Rio discography is chaos

in terms of what's hypothetically accessible. Just a harrowing discogs.com experience. These guys, I am rattled. We're going to get through this together. See if you can guess what this one's called. Suave. Suave. Suave. Suave. Suave.

Suave. Suave. Suave. Suhuis. Swoves. Swoves. Swo Suh You guessed it.

That's Suave from 1981. You pull in little bits of Los Del Rio's pre-Macharina history where you can. Los Del Rio for 30 years are flamenco singers. Primarily, they are, by and large, traditionalists, nostalgicists. They are regional stars. Even regional stars might be overstating it. They are working. They are successful.

They put out tons. of records in Spain. They tour. They tour internationally. But they do not aspire to global pop stardom in the traditional sense, or the non-traditional sense. Slate has that rad podcast one year where each season is various historical phenomena from a single year. And they did one year 1995 and devoted a whole episode to Macarena. And the episode quotes Los Del Rio themselves describing their audience as aging nostalgic Spaniards. And Lelaus, book, she describes Los Del Rio as we close in on the 90s as two 40-something gypsy musicians from Sevia, Spain, of little renown, even inside their own country. End quote. She means that with

great affection. Listen, these are just two sweet dudes making their flamenco tunes and wearing their suits and dancing their rumbas and minding their own business. Their success is modest and sustainable and their ambitions are modest and sustainable as well. Give me one more. That song is called Huelan Ayyirba from 1986. Goodness gracious, that is 1986 as fuck right there. Wow. 1986 ass drums. Did The Cure produce that? I dig it. You got to get Ronald Reagan himself to sing the song if you want to get any more in 1986 than that. So yeah, these guys. These guys in 1992. Willis del Rio are touring South America.

They are in Venezuela at a party also attended by Carlos Andres Perez, the president of Venezuela. More importantly, this party is also attended by a dancer named Diana Patricia Kubian. She dances for the party. Antonio is inspired by Diana's dancing and improvises a little song to encourage. her. A song about a woman named Madelena. The lyrics to Antonio's little song translate roughly to Give Your Body Joy, Madelena. Your body is made for happiness and good things. When Deanna is interviewed by the Associated Press in 1996, she says, When Antonio saw me dance, the words just came out. His inspiration was me. Why would that be? Because of the shape of my body?

The way I danced? What do I know? End quote. You can find Diana on Instagram. Her IG name is La Macarena del Mundo. For indeed, by the time Los Del Rio record their little song, they've changed the girl's name. It is a reliable source of semi-viral internet content to assert that the lyrics to Macarena are ha hairl. Hella dirty? Which requires, first of all, jumping to the horniest possible interpretation of the phrase, give your body joy, not to discourage anyone's horniness. But let me politely point out that Los Del Rio renamed the lady in the song Macarena, and named the whole song Macarena, for two reasons. First off, they named it for the Basilica de la Macarena in Seville, the quite famous Catholic church and tourist destination, home of La Esperanza Macarena, the quite famous statue of of the Weeping Virgin Mary with a glass tears. I looked at a close-up of the Weeping Virgin Mary and I thought immediately of Adam Sandler in uncut gems. It's a very jarring association I made in my head. Also, they named the song Macarena

because Antonio has a daughter named Macarena. Let's maybe get our minds out of the gutter, shall we? Anyway, this part of the song is about how Macarena has a boyfriend named Viterino who's serving in the military. So while he's gone, she hooks up with two of his friends. I guess hooks up is a hornier interpretation, but close enough. You may have noticed that the song is all there already.

Immediately this song, this version is the Song of the Summer in Spain. The key components of Macarena, the brightest and shiniest and sharpest hooks, are already in place. The little flourish you usually get at the end of every fourth line, the IE, low-key, that's the most important part of the song, right? I probably won't do that again. In Leila Kobo's book, Antonio talks up that IE, he says that's very typical of Sevilla. It's almost like a greeting for us. That IE is the reason the chorus loops in your head, but also the relentless handclaps, the buoyant percussion, the genial blending of Antonio's and Raphael's voices, the propulsion

of it all. The enormous appeal here doesn't require much translation, nor does it require much embellishment. Macarena is the lead off track on Los Del Rio's 1993 album, Ami Mecusta. That's I like it. This is the last relatively normal

and chill record. These dudes are going to make for quite a while. So take a second to revel in the genial chillness of it. That's called San Sereni. I don't speak Spanish. I imagine that's quite obvious by now, given my pronunciation of literally everything. My apologies, but I'm into the language barrier here. I am meeting these two sweet dudes on their level, on their turf. I am content to turn most of my brain off and just listen to these dudes

sing the bejesus out of a song called Conal Corazon. That's with the heart. I'd like to think I'd have gotten that even if I didn't know that. Yeah, Ami Meeguista is a lovely low-stakes record, even if you are not personally and aging nostalgic Spaniard. And I'm super into it right now as a celebration of modest regional excellence, as an oasis of calm, or a pre-oasis, I guess. But it's just about time to shove Los Del Rio into the rocket ship. Macarena is remixed by the Spanish dance music duo Fangoria.

Sometimes you also see someone named Big Toxic credited as well. I hope that guy's real. I just want to know who exactly came up with this. And there it is. The Bouncing Ball Halftime Show riff. The earworm to rule them all. The monocultural punchline generator. The fuel in the rocket ship we just shoved Los Del Rio into.

Everybody find your butts. The faint handker The farther we go starting now, the more we lose the original song and the original sentiment. The farther we go, the more we lose Los Del Rio themselves. But this version, officially the River Phamix of Macarena, does what it's supposed to do, which is to say it triggers the bubonic plague. That part does sound way hornier now. The Macarena River Famix goes truly international

and proves especially dominant on dance floors in Latin America. The Find Your Butt dance emerges organically or semi-euro. organically. Once the macarena hits the United States, Seattle Radio is an early adopter, oddly enough, according to that Slate podcast, and good for Seattle. State side, you get scheming DJs, scheming

label executives. The line blurs quite a bit between spontaneous organic joy and nefarious industry-driven virality. But yeah, the bubonic plague hits Miami, where DJ Jammin Johnny Carreid wants to sneak Macarena onto a station, Power 96, but he needs

another remix. To go truly viral, to go full-blown monocultural in America, he needs a remix that isn't entirely in Spanish. DJs won't play the song if there isn't some English. Lavo's book, Decoding Despacito, is great for the way it maps out the slow progression of American pop radio

embracing bilingual pop. The very slow progression. Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad from 1970, right? The verse is, Felice Navidad. The chorus is, I want to wish you a Merry Christmas. The song practically translates itself. Gloria Stefan in the Miami Sound Machine, right, Kanga from 1985, is lyrically in English, but rhythmically it's another story and the lyrics themselves boil down to, yeah, this is happening. You're going to love it. So just let it happen. And next time, we won't have to spell out for you

exactly what's happening. I know you can't control yourself any longer. the next macarena remix needs to make everybody in America lose control. Jam and Johnny Karide knows a couple of producer guys in Miami with their own label. Bayside Records. Carlos de Jarsa and Mike in the night, Tri-A.

Carlos and Mike are given 72 hours to remix Macarena so it'll blow up in America. So Carlos write some lyrics. These lyrics don't exactly take Carlos 72 hours to write if you get my drift. When I dance, they call me Magaenae,

Carlos's friend Patty Alfaro is your lead vocalist, your actress, your new American sweetheart, your macarena. Move with me, dance with me, and if you're good, I'll take you home with me. This song is going mainstream, but also getting hornier. It's funny how that happens. Viterino is not going to be happy about this. No, don't you worry about my boyfriend, the boy whose name is Vitorino. I don't want him because then him, he was no good so I. I got to say that Patty's laugh is really something.

I remember Patty's laugh. I remember thinking that Patty's laugh was really something the very first time I heard Patty's laugh. Yikes. The Dos Amigos have survived the translation into English, but Patty wisely omits the military-based reason her boyfriend is out of town. Good idea. So from a detached guy who thinks way too hard about music standpoint, it's tempting for me to get all pompous and say, this song doesn't need English lyrics. Who gives a shit?

The appeal is clearly universal. Don't pander to monolingual dopes like me. But the plain fact is that I connected with this girl, this singer, this character, immediately, as a 15-year-old Ohioan dufus,

immediately in my head, I was like, this sounds like my friend Jen. She's playful. She likes to dance. She laughs. She calls boys fine. She laughs at boys after she calls them fine.

This remix worked on me. is what I'm saying. I was expertly pandered to the Bayside Boys remix of Macarena. And indeed, this is the canonical chart-topping monoculturally resplendent MC rage antagonizing, truly monolithic version of Macarena. Give the Bayside Boys remix credit for gracing the world with Patty Alfaro's laugh. And once we've given the Bayside Boys credit for that, we can also acknowledge that the Bayside Boys remix otherwise makes very few alterations to the Fangoria remix. Indeed, it's the Fangoria Boys, the first remixers who are going to get boned this time. Musically, the Bayside Boys remix adds precious little to the previous remix. Allison Moyette of the great synth pop group,

Yazoo. We get a little sample of Her Laf in there. You don't hear it very often, but would you like me to seduce you, Anne Bancroft's famous line from the graduate, is originally in there, except it's a sample of the George Michael's song Too Funky, sampling the graduate. The Bayside Boys themselves were not aware that the sample was a quote from the graduate. I very much enjoy overall what gets lost in translation as this song keeps getting culturally retranslated. But yeah, long story short, the Bayside Boys remix hits Power 96 in Miami and then blows up on pop radio nationwide. That remix is unauthorized by Los Del Rio, then, themselves, but the label big shots and the lawyers work something out. There are shitloads of

money to distribute now. Or not distribute. The Bayside Boys remix of Makarena hits number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in August 1996, and it will remain at number one until November. 14 weeks at number one. Bootlegs and knockoffs and devious schemes abound. Are you familiar with the Canadian group Los Del Marr, meaning those of the sea, and their blockbuster hit Macarena, which appeared on their 1995 hit album, Macarena, The Hit Album. This is basically a pre-internet SEO ploy, and God bless. The additional nefarious and quite brilliant scheme here is that Canadian radio stations are acquired by law to play a certain percentage of local Canadian artists, giving Los

Del Marr home field advantage in the Macarena Wars. Quite frankly, this is a level of devious that I do not ordinarily associate with Canada. I feel quite naive, as I say that. That's on me. That's a failure of imagination. I have underestimated the underhandedness of Canadians. Can I tell you that revisiting the Bayside Boys remix now, I am quite taken with a propulsion with which Patty delivers the line always at the party?

Come and find me. My name is Magarena. Always at the party with the tickets. That's good. Come join me. I've known for two years more or less that I was going to have to deal with Macarena eventually. And I didn't dread it exactly, but I did wonder what effect it would have on my brain chemistry listening to this song again 500 times. And I feel great, actually. I do. I hope

you feel okay. I'd like to think I never went in for performative macarena hatred, even as a dufous teenager. But I'm embracing the virality. of it all. I do encourage you to rewatch the Macarena video, even if it's with the sound off. You have a couple options, at least two options. Attractive, half-dressed young people dancing the macarena is the unifying theme. And then you got the fellows in Los Del Rio and their natty suits, singing the hook, dancing for like 1.5 seconds at a time, perhaps twirling an umbrella, and generally still minding their own business. There's something quite charming about the inherent culture clash, the generational clash here. It's like a relentlessly youth targeted

gap ad that inexplicably includes the two middle-aged gap executives who greenlit the ad. The execs were like, can we be in the ad? Can we wear suits and sing into one of those old-timey hanging microphones? And the directors are like, all right, you're paying for it. But already the Los Del Rio fellows are just cogs in their own machine. It is the Bayside boys, quote, unquote, who will appear on Oprah, who will teach Oprah the dance. But by that point, it's only Carlos de Jarsa from the original Bayside Boys. And it's the singer Carla Vanessa playing the role of Macarena now. It might be best to view Macarena as a character and to view the song Macarena as a traveling theater production with charming regional variations. Carla's laugh is pretty good.

That's fine. Here's what I want you to do. You won't actually do this. Don't do this. But the final boss of the Macarena phenomenon is to listen to the 1996 Los Del Rio compilation album called Fiesta Macarena. If you're streaming this song now on Spotify or whatever, you're streaming it off this

record. Listen to this record straight through. You won't, but do it. Don't do it, but do it. This record is super chaos. There are 14 tracks on Fiesta Macarena. Four of those tracks are versions of the song Macarena, including the

Los Del Rio original, the Fangoria remix, and the Bayside Boys remix. A couple other newish songs spontaneously break into the Macarena chorus at random points, as if concerned that you will forget that Los Del Rio or the Macarena guys, if they don't remind you every 90 seconds. There are a handful of other songs from Ami Megusta, the 93 Los Del Rio record of genial chill flamenco songs, sprinkled throughout the remixes in general chaos. And then there's this shit. This is quite possibly the single most confounding piece of music I have encountered in my two years doing this show.

I am generally a confused person, but this is next level. This is Notet Vias Toto Villa, the old school Memei remix. I am uncertain how to pronounce Meme, M-E, M-E, but it's not pronounced meme. I'm almost positive about that. Notet Vias Toto Villa translates to don't go yet. And I love this extremely chaotic song very much. We're doing G-Funk and we're shadow-coding genius of love. Fuck it.

We're doing five blades. I just adore the way the Los Del Rio fellows make a very precise amount of not very much sense as cogs in this particular machine. They, too, have lost control. But they have submitted genially and modestly to the whirlwind they created. And here's where I'm They do a Christmas song They do a whole Macarena Kinsenera album When the song turns 15 in 2008

They ride the wave They get on with their lives When the wave crests and breaks and rolls back They are one-hit wonders They embrace the wondrousness of it all. Macarena is a monocultural phenomenon breaks the ubiquity sound barrier, right? It goes so viral that plenty of people get justifiably sick of it. There is a healthy and also somewhat unhealthy backlash. Shout out MC Rage. A song this inescapable is destined, among some people, to be a

punchline. But the Los Del Rio fellows never seem particularly bothered. They are now not so modestly successful, but their modesty, their geniality shines through, their geniality survives. They're down for whatever. They don't have to understand what it is they're down for, exactly. And neither do you. Actually, here's where I'd like to leave Lois Del Rio. So Yahoo! the guys in 2021. And Raphael Ruiz talks about Macarena success. And he says, We thought that this was a gift from

Virhan Macarena. And both Raphael and Antonio say that the single greatest highlight of their Macarena-driven superstardom is in 1996 when they get to perform at the Vatican and meet Pope John Paul the 2nd and Mother Teresa.

They also get to sing a song called Ole Ole. Now, I do hope that whatever your personal religious inclinations, I certainly hope that right now you are not picturing Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa dancing the macarena. That would be rude, I think. That would be a little sacrilegious of you to be imagining that. So I hope you didn't do that, but I did. And I feel bad, but not that bad. Bodies are made for happiness. And if you never want to hear this song again, yeah, I get it. But as Bubonic

plagues go. This was a pretty great one. Our guest this week, we're so happy to welcome back Lela Kobo, the VP of Latin Music at Billboard, and the author of Decoding Despacito in Oral History of Latin Music. Lela, welcome back, and thank you so much for your time. Hi, Rob, great to be here again. It's great to have you. Los Del Rio had been around for like 30 years before Macarena. Were they on your radar at all pre-Macarena? I'm just trying to get a sense of their public profile before any of this happened. Not on my raider, not at all. I had no idea who these guys were.

And I think once you hear their music, not that there's anything wrong with them at all. It's just that it was very local music from Sevilla. Yeah, no, they were not in my raider. I would be lying. Even from the beginning, like they formed in the 60s, were they ever, sort of modern and forward thinking, or was their music always very deliberately sort of retro or nostalgic? How did they think of themselves back then? I wouldn't be able to tell you how they thought of themselves, but the music I hear from them, and even macarena. It's, you know, it's music,

it's more traditional guitar, clapping music from Sevilla. It's, yeah, it's a little poppy, but it's really it's music that's made to be danced in the fairs. I don't think that they were a group with big international ambitions, to be honest. They were very much a local group doing local regional music. They were popular in Spain. They were signed to a very small indie. And they were, you know, they were doing the music from their homeland. That's basically what they were doing.

So I would say they were, you know, I would think like a roots. artist or like a blues artist from New Orleans, like that kind of thing, which is great music, but it's not music that they're plotting to take over the world with it. Well, that's what I was going to ask you, like, if they planned this or even really aspired to it before it happens. Like, did they make macarena happen or did macarena kind of just happen to them? I would say macarena happened to them. However, the way they tell the story, Macarena happened to them,

but they had something in their hands. They realized that this song was a hit song because people were reacting to it very immediately. In fact, they were describing in Sevilla, they have these fairs and they have... The tents. They have the tents that they put during the festival in Sevilla, and he was telling me,

everybody was flocking towards their song. So in the fair, they already knew there was a response to the song, and so much so that the song was remixed by Fangoria. So within what they did, which is this kind of danceable, you know, Spanish music, they recognized that they had a hit. But I'm sure I can't imagine that they thought this was going to become what it became. It's sort of hard to filter out what they became, but the original song, you know, the 1993 Los Del Rio original before the remix.

Like, is there some quality you can identify in it that made it such a big regional hit, how it takes over the tents, it takes over festivals like that? Like, how is it so different from the music these guys had been making at that point for 30 years? I don't think it was so different from the music they'd been making. But I do think the thing is it's so hard to talk about Makarena without, talking about macarena, which we know by heart. But I do think it's kind of a contagious, you know, the whole, eh, macarena, huh.

You know, I love that. And I think that that was particularly effective. So even, you know, all kinds, you never know what's going to break in music and what's going to connect in music and what's going to make a hit and not make a hit. And I think here, maybe they unwittingly wrote this huge, massive hit that in its original iteration, remain very localized. But once somebody took it and gave it like that international production twist, then it became something else. And that's what happens too when you have a great song and you put the right producer to it, right?

They take it from being just a good song to being a big commercial success. Right. And as you said, originally that was Fangoria, you know, a Spanish group, you know, they did the remix that the keyboard line, do do do do do like that was them, right? But they kind of got screwed a little bit here. Like the Bayside Boys remix is the one everybody knows. That's the one that tops the charts. That has the English vocals. But like it's that remix is based off Fangoria's work. But you don't read as much about Fangoria. I don't think they got paid really anything. I don't, I think they even talked about suing, but they, like it's, that remix is based off Fangoria's work. But you don't read as much about Fangoria's work. I don't, I don't think they even talked about suing, but they. But they. I don't, then didn't? Like, are they sort of the forgotten elements here? I have to admit that I had forgotten about them. Yeah. That, in fact, when I began to write the book, I had completely forgotten about that Fangoria remix,

completely until they brought it up. Sure. I think Fangoria has been forgotten in this process, and it was their version. Their version is the one that crossed the Atlantic. Right, right. It wasn't the original. It was Fangoria's version.

which started playing in all these little clubs all over Latin America, all over Mexico, initially, and then eventually came to the States and remixed that Bayside voice heard and remixed. So yes, I think Fangoria was forgotten. But at the end of the day, a remix is a remix. So it's not the original. Like they don't, unless they've made some kind of agreement, they don't really have a right to acclaim to the copyright because they took something that was already made. I don't know, in all fairness, if Fangodia asked for original permission to remix the track.

I don't know what that process was. That said, you're from Miami, and I'm very curious about the Miami of it all here and the Bayside Boys of it all. Like the Miami of the mid-90s, the music scene and the radio scene there, how is that reflected in the Bayside Boys remix? Is Macarena ultimately a Mycena? Miami song, like a Miami anthem as much as it's anything else? I think Macarena is a Miami song.

That's a great question. I had never thought about it that way. But this happened before I came to Miami. But when I came to Miami, I would say there were still remnants of that time, which is a slightly older, more laid back Miami. the place where Jammin Jimmy talks about playing it is a club that was in Coconut Grove

So there were like These big clubs These dance clubs that were kind of out You know Open air And yes I think it was very very much Miami You need this city Where Latin culture is just so

meshed into it. You can't differentiate. I can't describe Miami to people that haven't been to Miami. Once you come to Miami and everybody speaks Spanish, it's such a Latin city. And even the scene

in the clubs is different because people are dancing a lot of Latin music. So I can't imagine this happening anywhere else. I really can't. I think Miami was quintessential. And then also Miami had the power station. And that's really important because this is a station that was playing music in Spanish

before anyone else did. So you had a big metropolitan station, a big power station that routinely played either Latin music in English or music in Spanish. This was part of the programming mix. So for them playing something like this wasn't weird or like, oh my God, what a huge risk we're taking. No, they could have fun with it. And they did.

I can't imagine that that would have happened first hand in New York, just like that. I just can't. You and I are speaking now around Grammy Week, you know, where Bad Bunny is so prominent. Bad Bunny is objectively, I think, the biggest pop star in the world. And it's very hard to imagine a time when it was risky for American pop radio to play a song with no English. You know, is there just no way that Macarena crosses over to American Pop Radio in 1996 to that extent, if it's all in Spanish? I don't think it could have ever crossed for a million reasons.

First of all, because the original artist in the song were these two older gentlemen from Sevilla, who looked like two older gentlemen from Sevilla, because if you tell me that, it was Slash and Ron Woods. Okay, fine. Okay, interesting. Yeah, but no, you know, you have these two gentlemen from Sevilla and their suits and ties. And so it's not like what you expect from two pop stars. So you had that.

And then in the middle you put like this, this whole English language riff. But it was sung in a voice with an accent, another Miami thing, right? He gave her like this very Miami accent. And then suddenly it makes sense. And it becomes cute. It becomes endearing.

So you see them and you see the girls. And it's like it becomes kitsy and it's catchy. and all these things happen. I don't think one can happen without the other. Yeah, yeah, I agree. This is a ridiculously broad question, and I apologize, but why did Macarena happen when it happened?

Even more so than other, like, fluke hits or one hit wonders or whatever, this song just feels random and out of nowhere and, like, just standing outside the flow of linear time. Like, does Macarena blowing up in 1995 and 96 specifically make any sense to you? You're asking me these deep, really good questions today. No, it doesn't make sense to me. Yeah.

Because it wasn't like the midst of the new Latin explosion with Ricky and Mark, et cetera. It was slightly before. But I think it makes sense in kind of the linear development of Latin music that I take in the book. You know, and decoding despotito, I just kind of go step by step. And I do think one thing leads to another. So even though it's kind of an outlier, it did come after Conga, if you think about it. And so I think there was a little bit of the ear was used to this blend, this mix of different genres in a song. And I think that all of that helps.

I think even subconsciously, you may not think, oh, my God, this is macarena. And, oh, we used to hear conga. But I think that your ear kind of is receptive to it perhaps. Right. That makes sense. And Miami was sexy at the time. We had Miami viz and all of that was going on had already happened. So there's kind of this sex appeal about the city and it's hot and it's steamy and

you have all these kind of blends going on and cultures coming together. So I think it was, it's kind of a good stepping stone between what came before and what would come after. But it's, it's just an anomaly in every sense of the word. It's such an unexpected track. I can't imagine that anybody thought this was going to happen. Right. Because you write about Ricky Martin at the Grammys is like a huge moment, you know. Huge moment.

And you can, you know, there's a lot in between that. you can connect him that moment to Bad Bunny, but it's harder to connect Macarena to Ricky Martin or anything after. But I like you just saying, like just hearing Spanish at all on pop radio, you know, just retunes people's brains a little bit. You know,

they're open to the next thing, whether that's gasoline or whatever. Like, there's not a direct line, but just hearing Spanish on pop radio is enough to sort of move things forward a little bit, I guess. I think so. And then Macarena,

And I had another thing which was deliberate. This was deliberate in the marketing. But again, I don't think that they ever imagined. This was what was going to happen. But it had the dance. Right, right. And the dance was fundamental. The dance was fundamental.

When this song came out, I was still in Colombia. And the dance was great. Anybody could dance. It was such an easy little thing to do. And you could do it. It was a line dance. and everybody looked cute doing it. I remember in the parties,

all the girls would get up. It was, that was, that made it super attractive. So that, I think, was a stroke of genius. And that was not in the original version. I don't even know if there was a video in the original version, to be honest. But once they made the video and they had them dancing it, and there was MTV, then I think it also became a whole other thing. It was genius, but like there, we've never nailed down.

exactly who that was, right? Like, it feels very organic. Like, there's not somebody who claims they invented the Macarena dance, right? Like, it felt like it just sort of spontaneously happened everywhere at once. It does, although Jesus Lopez in the book says that

they came and did the dance for him in his office. That's right. Whoever choreographed it. I, and I, but I don't know who made up the dance. I don't know if it was like the video director, if there was a choreographer that they hired for the video, that to me seems to make sense. Like you would have the video choreographer come and do the dance.

And at that time, there was a whole thing about doing little dances with songs and videos. If you recall, it was a thing. Well, it still is a thing. But it's hard to find the right song. Yeah, yeah. A song that's perfect for one dance doesn't come around that often. you know, but it's a beautiful and very silly thing when it does.

Yeah, Jesus Lopez says, Jesus Lopez was the head of BMG at the time. And he says that he hired a choreographer who did a remix and he brought dancers and they came up with the dance. Okay. All right. So we'll give it to him. That's fine. He can take credit for that. I don't know if there's any money in that anymore, but he can have it, the credit if he wants it. For you personally, TikTok, yeah. I'm very glad there was not TikTok in the mid-90s. That would have been really bad for everyone and me especially.

For you personally, you know, and for people really immersed in Latin music in the mid-90s, when something like Macarena happens, are you really excited about the opportunities? Are you a little trepidacious about Macarena suddenly being the Latin pop song that everyone knows? Like, does this song represent the best of, Latin music in the mid-90s from your perspective?

I don't think this song represents the best of any point in Latin music. However, I am one of the millions who learn the dance, dance to dance in countless parties and countless nightclub, and had a blast. And I have to say that even now, whenever I'm at a wedding, because they love to put the song, play the song in weddings, as you will know. And they put macarena.

It makes me so happy to think, oh my God, I can get up, I can dance this thing, I can do the shimmy, and it's great. And so I think there's a lot to be said for a song that's able to do that. And I think the song was very authentic. It didn't really represent Latin music, I don't think, but I think it was very authentic.

I think it was very earthy, and then it had that earthiness married to that little electronic thing and it just worked and the fact that it was a mix of Spain and Miami and Seviganas and dance I think that's fun

I can never argue with a Latin song being number one. I always think it's great. Let's all celebrate. Okay. That's all we can say. That's a perfect place to wrap up.

Leila, thank you so much. It was great to talk to you again. Rob, thank you. Thanks so much to our guest this week, Layla Kobo. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Jonathan Kerma. Additional production support provided by Chloe Clark. And thanks, as always to you for listening. And now, if you dare, why don't you go listen to the mockeryne?

You don't have to listen to it, but you could. If you want to listen to the mockarena, go listen to the mockarena. Thank you very much. We'll see you next week. Thank you.