Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Hey Hit Parade listeners, this is Chris Melanfy. This month's episode was recorded from my home office in Brooklyn, New York, which explains the slightly different audio quality. With the coronavirus, pandemic and social distancing in full force, Creating this episode was a special challenge for my team, but we offer it to you in the hopes that it provides a brief respite from the extraordinary circumstances we are all facing. Music is a balm to me in tough times, as I'm sure it is for many of you. So let's put pandemics in their place and please enjoy this month's episode of Hit Parade. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show Maybe it seems like forever ago now, but if you watched the halftime show at this year's super bowl just eight weeks ago, you caught a rather culturally historic event, the first ever halftime devoted exclusively to music by Latin American performers. Led off by Colombian superstar Shakira and headlined by Puerto Rican American singer, dancer and actress Jennifer Lopez, the spectacle was a proud celebration of Latin heritage. At one point, the woman who is now mainly known as JLo even waved a Puerto Rican flag. Of course, the halftime performance was packed with hits, the two superstars and had a wealth to draw upon, including former number ones by Shakira. And by jlo, And even some songs that were not hits for either Lopez or Shakira. The ladies were representing for for an entire Pan Latin culture. That's a heavy responsibility to carry for a frothy televised spectacle. But Lopez and Shakira both remember how two decades ago it still seemed novel for performers of their heritage to be crossing over on the Anglophone American charts at all. Of course, it's not like Latin crossover was invented 20 years ago. Spanish language hits have been making remarkable appearances on the American charts since the dawn of rock and roll. But as late as the mid-90s, Spanish language hits were basically treated as novelties, fun for parties or dancing, but not much more. What arguably changed this perception and led to a boom in Latin pop crossover on the Hot 100 came 21 years ago at the 1999 Grammy Awards. That's when a dynamic, hip, swiveling performer who got his start in a Puerto Rican boy band but had to that date never scored a top 40 pop hit delivered one of the most career defining awards show performances of all time. Today on Hit Parade, we'll talk about the boomlet in Latin pop crossover brought about by this dynamic young man. Born Enrique Martin Morales. It was a cultural watershed not just for Ricky Martin, but for an entire generation of musicians of Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican and Colombian heritage. Ricky's star is born moment was galvanizing, but arguably it took most of the next two decades for core Latin music to move to the center of American pop without compromising its sound or or even its language. Before we get there, we'll look back fondly at the moment when the American charts were shaking their bonbon to a Latin beat delivered in fluent Spanglish. And that's where your Hit Parade marches today, the week ending May 8, 1999, when Ricky Martin scored his first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 with Livin La Vida Loca. Less than three months after his winning Grammy showcase, Ricky kicked off what would come to be known as Latin Bumita version 1.0 on the American charts. In the three year history of this podcast, Hit Parade has covered a wide array of musical genres. But Latin music is more than a genre. It's an entire universe of sounds, styles and rhythms developed over centuries and across generations of Afro, Caribbean and Iberian descendants. Even if we limited our focus to just the music beloved by Spanish speaking Americans in the last 50 to 100 years, we couldn't hope to cover it all. A proper survey of Latin American hit music would include such best selling styles as salsa, Merengue. And its cousin bachata, Mexican ranchera. From the Portuguese speaking world of Brazil, bossa nova. And samba, And from my own Cuban heritage, such styles as the song. All of these Latin genres have sold millions and form a kind of parallel hit parade hidden in plain sight. And of course, on the other side, the sounds of Latin music have also helped shape mainstream English language pop. Whether it's the brass of a mariachi group, Love Is a Burning Thing, or in dance music, the irresistible rhythm of a piano clave derived from Latin jazz and salsa. All of this we take for granted in mainstream popular music. On Hit Parade, we tend to focus on all genre charts, like the Hot 100 Songs chart or the Billboard 200 album chart. And on these surveys, the success of Spanish language music has been far more limited. Songs that are legendary in the world of Latin music have not even appeared on the US Flagship charts. In this episode, however, we will identify the exceptions. The Latin songs that broke through this overwhelming Anglophone tendency in US Pop. This is its own interesting story. One of assimilation, adaptation and pop inspiration. And it started near the dawn of rock and roll. We talked about Richie Valens's La Bamba in our posthumous hits episode Live in Seattle last year. Born Ricardo Valenzuela to Mexican parents in California's San Fernando Valley, Valens will of course always be associated with the so called day the music died, having perished in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. But Valens also holds the distinction of scoring the first major Spanish language crossover hit of the rock era. It reached number 22 on the Hot 100 in early 1959. Though Valens earned songwriting credit for his rock adaptation, La Bamba was in fact an old folk song, in essence an instructional dance song from the Mexican state of Veracruz. It dated back to at least the early 20th century and was played commonly at Mexican weddings and other celebrations. In a way, this hit by Richie Valens set a template for Latin crossover for the early rock era. For the next dozen years, a handful of indelible songs adapted by modern performers took on the status of Latin standards and they would recur for decades to come. For example, Guantaramera was an anthem in Cuba as far back as the 1920s with lyrics by Cuban poet and political figure Jose Marti. In the 50s and 60s Juan Taramera was revived by American folkies like Pete Seeger, and in 1966American easy listening vocal group the Sandpipers took the song, complete with Spanish lyrics, to number nine on the Hot 100. Or from Brazil, tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from I, Antonio Carlos Jobim, wrote a song about a beautiful 17 year old girl living in the seaside town of Ipanema. Eventually recorded by American jazz saxophonist Stan Goetz and bossa nova pioneer Joao Gilberto. With Portuguese sung by Joao and English lyrics sung by his wife Astrud Gilberto, the Girl from Ipanema was a global smash and a number five hit on the Hot 100 in 1964 or from New York's Puerto Rican or Nuyorican community. Though it was only a regional hit and did not make the Hot 100, I like it like that became legendary in salsa music circles in 1967. That's when Pete Rodriguez and his Latin jazz band recorded the brassy piano vamping track for the studio storied Bronx based Latin jazz label Allegra, notably in English. I Like it like that was a radio smash in Rodriguez's hometown of New York, placed in heavy rotation by disc jockey and salsa booster Symphony Sid. And while we're on the topic of songs written by Nuyoricans. There's this cross cultural classic. Written by Tito Puente, the Puerto Rican American timbale king Oy Como Va was transformed into an electric rock jam by Mexican American guitarist Carlos Santa Santana in 1970. Santana's version reached number 13 on the Hot 100 in 1971. All five of these songs La Bamba Guanta, Rameda, the Girl from Ipanema, I Like it like that and Oye Como Va entered the Latin crossover canon, songs that even Americans with no Latin heritage would recognize that made them touchstones to future generations of performers, songs that offered both cultural credibility and instant familiarity. Keep these songs in mind because several of them will come back later in our story. Moving into the 70s and 80s, Latin music would infuse the American hit parade from time to time, but there was always an X factor, something that made songs cross over to Anglophone audiences. Especially if a song was sung in Spanish, there would have to be a metanarrative, a backstory spurring that song up the charts. For example, the Spanish group Mose Dades represented for their home country in the 1973 edition of Eurovision, the annual international song competition. Their single eres 2 very nearly won Eurovision for Spain, coming in a very close second that year. Although the song's title translates in Spanish as It's you, the band tried issuing it as an English language version with the unrelated title Touch the the Wind. Yet American radio DJs preferred Eres 2 in its original form, and the song reached number nine on the Hot 100 in March of 1974. One year later, a Mexican American singer pulled off a similarly fluky crossover. Then I wish you all the best. Tejano singer Freddie Fender had been skirting the borders of country music for more than a decade when he recorded a song before the next Teardrop Falls that had been covered by more than 20 prior country stars, including Charley Pride. No one had ever scored a big hit with the twangy Weeper, but Fender cleverly heard a certain Tex Mex flavor in the song, Recorded with both English and Spanish lyrics before the next Teardrop Falls was a number one pop and country smash for Freddie Fender. In the spring of 1975, he scored a couple more pop hits and more than a dozen country hits, including several number ones, many with his distinctive Tejano flavor. Freddie Fender might have been an unlikely ambassador of Latin music on the country trip charts, but there was an even more unlikely country pop visitor, a suave heartthrob who had quietly amassed one of the biggest Audiences in the world. Singing mostly en espanol, Julio Iglesia remains one of the biggest selling global musicians of all time. Like Mosedades, he hails from Spain and even represented his homeland one year at Eurovision. During the 70s, the debonair Iglesias rose to fame singing in a variety of languages, including Italian, French, German, Portuguese and of course, several dialects of Spanish. By 1981, he scored a number one British hit with a discofied, mostly Spanish cover of the Cole Porter classic Begin the Beginning. But all of this was a war for Julio Iglesias. Most unlikely crossover of all, a pop and country smash duet with a native Texan and Nashville legend, To all the Girls I've Loved before is still treated as a punchline to an implied joke. Who are the two least likely singers ever to duet on a single, let alone a song about their collective romantic prowess? That would be Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson, who in 1984 were each out of the zenith of their respective fame. And improbable as it may seem, to all the Girls I've Loved before was a Smash. A number one country number five pop hit in May 1984, it powered Iglesias first mostly English album 1100 Bel Air Place to sales of 4 million in the US alone. It would be the only time Julio Iglesias would break into the pop top 10, but not the last time the name Iglesias would appear there. Having succeeded with this unlikely crossover, the music business spent the rest of the 1980s seeing how far Latin music could go on the American pop charts. For example, RCA Records tried to break Latin America's biggest boy band. Menudo was arguably the 80s Latin equivalent of a K pop band with an ever shifting roster of members. Mine Menudo even included a young Ricky Martin. Hold Me, released during the Ricky period, was one of their few English language singles and Menudo's only single to reach the hot 100, peaking at a lowly number 62. On the other hand, a Cuban American mega combo from Miami tried their hand at English and did far better. Come on, shake your body baby, do that conga. No, you can't control yourself any longer. The Miami sound machine, led by singer Gloria Estefan and her band leader husband Emilio, were the ultimate 80s Latin party band, comprising more than a dozen members, including a full brass section. After a half dozen Spanish language albums dating back to the late 70s, Gloria began singing in English in 1984. And by the time of 1985's conga, they found a remarkably authentic crossover sound that began to generate hits on top 40 radio. But once the Miami sound Machine crossed to pop radio, the Estefans determined their future lay in showcasing Gloria's vocals and moving toward adult contemporary balladry. Though I've heard it all before. Though they would continue to include uptempo Latin cuts on future albums, the Estefans eventually replaced all of the original Machine members and their albums and singles began to feature Gloria's name alone. Still, at the same time that the Estefans were painting pivoting toward middle of the road balladry, a Mexican American band from East LA was scoring what remains the only all Spanish number one hit in Hot 100 history. Los Lobos recorded recorded a cover of La Bamba for the soundtrack to the Ritchie Valens biopic of the same name in the summer of 1987. It not only spent three weeks at number one, in all three of those weeks it was the most played song at US radio. That was a big deal given a man American top 40 stations aversion to playing non English tracks and La Bamba contains no English lyrics at all. Lobos cover even went a step further into cultural authenticity than Valens original version did. They closed the song playing mariachi style traditional accord acoustic guitars. True, this chart topping success was fueled by a hit summer movie. The critically acclaimed Los Lobos never scored a top 10 hit again. But with hindsight, La Bambas success may have widened the lane for Latin crossover in a couple of ways. On the album chart, more artists felt brave about issuing more traditional Latin music. Later that same year, the chart topping and previously all English vocalist Linda Ronstadt got in touch with her Mexican American heritage on the album Canciones Demi Padre. A quiet steady seller, Ronstadt's Canciones eventually went double platinum, becoming the biggest selling non English language album in American record history. By the early 90s, Gloria Estefan was getting back to her own roots on the all Spanish Cuban heritage album Mi Tierra. As with Ronstadt, Estefan's all Spanish album went platinum and became one of her top sellers. Even though it's true tracks did not cross over at Top 40 radio by the late 90s, the quest for Latin authenticity had even drawn in guitarist Ry Cooder, who traveled to Havana to record a combo of elderly son players that he dubbed the Buena Vista Social Club. Meanwhile, on top 40 radio and the pop charts after La Bamba, it became more plausible to mix lyrics in Spanish or Portuguese into a mainstream pop record. Though it was only a modest hit in America at the turn of the 90s, the dance and song known as Lambada, recorded by French Brazilian group Chaoma became a global phenomenon. Sung entirely in Portuguese and fueled by a so called forbidden dance that was like a YouTube dance craze. Before YouTube, Lambada topped charts in more than a dozen countries and was a sizable US club hit. Keep that melody in mind too, because like so many Latin crossovers in this episode it will return closer to home in America. As hip hop began taking over the charts in the early 90s, Latin music began fusing with rap with varying degrees of street cred. Havana born rapper Mellow Man Ace broke through with the bilingual Menti Rosa, a number 14 hit in 1990 that flipped back and forth between English and Cuban accented Spanish. A liar, a straight mentor. One year later, an Ecuadorian American rapper decided to take the Latin Lothario Persona further into comic territory. Laugh all you want at the Hirsute Gerardo with his bandana, long hair and bare chest under a leather jacket, but Rico Suave was a huge hit peaking at number seven on the Hot 100 in April 1991. Like Mellow Man, Ace, Gerardo proft offered a Spanglish rap with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Meanwhile, as west coast hip hop rose to prominence, LA rappers Cypress Hill dropped their debut album in 1991 and became the first Latin American rappers to go platinum. Their self titled debut not only included straight up gangsta tracks like How I Could Just Kill a Man, but on the single Latin lingo rappers Send Dog and Be Real traded off funky bilingual rhymes. The most remarkable Latin crossovers of the 90s, however, came not on the street corner but in the club. The first was a sleeper hit from a one off Gang of All Stars. The second was one of the biggest pop hits of the decade, The Blackout. All Stars were a super supergroup formed to record just one song, a cover of the aforementioned 1967 salsa classic I Like it like that. The phrase all stars was no exaggeration in the Latin music universe. The members were indeed legends, including lead singer Tito Nieves, Tito Puente, Ray Barreto, Paquito de Rivera, Dave Valentin, Grover Washington Jr. And Sheila Escovedo, aka Sheila E, Recorded for the soundtrack to the 1994 movie I like it like that. The Blackout All Stars I Like it took nearly three years to break Break. A push by New York dance music station WKTU coupled with an appearance in a 1996 Burger King commercial finally crossed the song over when it reached number 25 on the Hot 100 in March 1997. Pete Rodriguez's Nuyorican Standard was Finally, an actual pop hit hit. But then there was that other club single that crossed into the Anglo pop world. Macarena, written and recorded by a pair of 40 something Spaniards from Just outside of Seville who called themselves Los Del Rio, was a global phenomenon. Especially after a pair of Miami DJs who were dubbed the Bayside Boys, remixed the song, adding female English vocals. Similar to I like it like that. The remainder, a remix of Los Del Rios. Macarena took two tries to become a hit, breaking first with Miami radio listeners, then in New York before going national. It helped that by the summer of 1996 the song had spawned a dance. Come on, you know how it's done with the hands and and the hips. That dance made appearances at the 1996 Olympics and even the Democratic National Convention. By August of 96, the Bayside boys remix of Macarena was on top of the Hot 100 and stayed there for 14 weeks. The top hit of the year. All of this crossover by Spanish language pop was in theory softening the ground for a full on breakthrough by Latin pop stars. But here was the problem. In most cases, whether it was Gerardo, the Blackout All Stars or Los Del Rio, the hits were regarded as flukes. That's what made the premature passing of a towering figure in Mexican American music such a loss. Some even called her the Tejano Madonna. Selena Quintanilla Perez, known to her fans simply as Selena, is the ultimate what if in Latin crossover history. Years before Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez or Shakira, Selena was marked for greatness by the recording industry. She had been signed in 1989 to EMI's Latin Division with a long term plan to break her in the Anglo market. In the meantime, through the late 80s and early 90s, Selena became known as the queen of Tejano music. Selena's last all Spanish album, 1994Amor Prohibido, featured a wide array of genres, including not only Tejano but also R B and hip hop influences. By 1995, the plan was for EMI to break Selena as a multilingual, multi genre crossover artist and she began recording her first partial English album, Dreaming of you. The album was mostly finished in March 1995 when tragedy struck. Selena, age 23, was shot and killed by her fan club president, Yolanda Saldivat. Selena became not only Latin music's martyr, but its near miss. Dreaming of youf became the first predominantly Spanish language album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 album chart. The label issued a half dozen singles from the album and it was Ultimately certified triple platinum, it would fall to a new wave of stars to give Latin music the enduring permanent breakthrough that had eluded it through the mid-1990s and 22 years before the 2020 Super Bowl. It would take a different global sports championship to bring about that cultural catalyst. When we come back, Ricky offers America the cup of Life. Contrary to some Americans belief, Ricky Martin did not spring fully formed on Grammy night 1999. As I noted earlier, for five years in the late 80s he was a member of Menudo, the ever changing Puerto Rico based boy band. A native Puerto Rican himself, born and raised in San Juan, Martin emerged as a heartthrob and breakout star star in the pop group he signed to Sony Music's Latin division Sony Discos at the start of the 90s. While acting in sitcoms, telenovelas and for About a year, ABC's daytime soap opera General Hospital, Ricky began turning out Spanish language pop for the Latin market. On the Latin charts, Ricky Martin was a fairly consistent chart presence through the first half of the 90s, largely with florid ballads. But Martin began pushing against his label's advice to let him record up tempo material powered by more forceful Latin percussion, arguing that it would broaden his audience. Ricky's instincts proved spot on. 1996's Maria was not only Martin's first global smash going top 10 or even to number one in more than a half dozen countries. It even made the lower range rungs of America's flagship pop chart, peaking at number 88 on the Hot 100 despite being entirely in Spanish. A Spanglish remix with just a few verse lyrics in English followed in 1997, but even US listeners preferred the original version. The Glorious the global breakthrough of Maria changed the trajectory of Ricky Martin's career. It led to his highest profile showcase to date, an invitation by FIFA, the international governing federation of football or soccer, to record the official theme song of the 1998 World Cup. Martin, who was recording his follow up album Vuelve, jumped at FIFA's offer, expanding on the relentlessly uptempo, proudly Latin sound of Maria and bringing his a game to the task. La Copa de la Vida or the cup of Life, was performed by Ricky Martin in France's National Stadium at the World cup final on July 12, 1998. Seen by more than a billion viewers globally in America, the song did well enough at Spanish language radio stations to peak at number two on Billboard's Hot Latin Tracks chart. But Sony Music knew that the track, and Martin himself had greater potential. Later in 1998, when Martin's album Vuelve earned a Grammy nomination in the Latin pop category. Sony lobbied the Grammy producers to give Martin a performing slot on the telecast the following February. Ricky was hardly the most hyped performer on that year's Grammys. Superstars with multiple nominations, including Madonna, Celine Dion and Lauryn Hill, were all slated to perform. But good as they were, none of them was the most talked about performer of the night. In just four minutes at the Shrine Auditorium in the Los Angeles, joined by an army of dancers, backup singers, drummers and circus performers, Ricky Martin, swiveling his hips in leather pants, changed the trajectory of both his own career and Latin music itself. The key now would be capitalizing on this breakthrough. What both Maria and the cup of Life had revealed was that Martin could translate Latin rhythms for a mainstream global pop audience traveling seamlessly between Spanish and English. The cup of Life in particular had been co written by two industry veterans with Latin heritage of their own. Robbie Rosa, who had been Martin's bandmate in Menudo, that's Robbie singing lead on Hold Me by the way. And Desmond Child, the Cuban American pop rock mastermind who had written hits for Kiss, Bon Jovi, Joan Jett and Cher. Rosa and Child were asked by Team Ricky to come up with a another hybrid hit that leaned more toward the English side of Spanglish. And the song they devised was a monster. Livin La Vida Loca. The blend of languages was built right into the title was one of the fastest breaking hits of 1999. Remember, to this point, Ricky Martin had never come close to the top 40 on the Hot 100. But that changed quickly. In just four weeks, Livin La Vida Loca shot from number 54 to number 32 to number 8 to number 1. And it stayed there for more than than a month. The song was an encyclopedia of Latin music in just four minutes. Desmond Child later boasted that he and his arrangers threw in the kitchen sink, including Kimballe piano styling, Afro Cuban and Brazilian rhythms, horns and gongs, and a rock guitar line that would allow Ricky to strut, Child said, like a Latin Elvis. He even modeled the melody after Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack. The latter cultural explosion was on. The floodgates were open. Most pop fans remember 1999 as the year of teen pop and TRL, as we discussed in our Britney Spears episode of Hit Parade. To be sure, Britney and the Backstreet Boys had an amazing year. But on the Hot 100, the more consistently high traffic charting performers were all Latin stars. And after Martin, the first to benefit had like Ricky an actor, singer and dancer Been trying a bit of everything for the last decade. Growing up in the Bronx, a young even Jennifer Lopez would dabble in anything that might one day make her famous. Acting, dancing, even gymnastics and track. During the early 90s, Lopez was a choreographer and a backup dancer for such acts as New Kids on the Block and Janet Jackson. She danced on TV as a so called fly girl on the Wayans Brothers sketch comedy series In Living Color. Oh yeah, and Lopez also sang, but it was her least pursued talent prior to her mid-20s. What finally convinced Jennifer Lopez to seriously consider a full time singing career was actually an acting gig, one that had special prominence within the Latin community. In the 1997 biopic Selena, the late Latin superstar was played by Jennifer Lopez. As an actress of Puerto Rican descent, Lopez earned scorn in certain corners of the Mexican American community for playing Tejano music's most famous singer. But Lopez won acclaim for the performance, though she did not sing in the film. The warm reception for Selena convinced several in the music business, particularly Sony music executive Tommy Mottola, the man who discovered Mariah Carey, that the future J. Lo could pursue a full on pop career. In short, Jennifer Lopez would at last become a singer after she had tried and succeeded at everything else. If youf Had My Love was the first single from on the six, Jennifer Lopez's debut album. It dropped the same month Ricky Martin was scaling the charts with Livin La Vida Loca. Unlike Martin, Lopez had no prior Latin pop career to fall back on. No need to transition out of Spanish language material. Her ticket would be English language pop with a nebulously Latin flavor. That nebulousness was especially true of if you had My Love. Produced and co written by R and B hitmaker Rodney Jerkins. The song could just as easily have been recorded by the other artists Jerkins was producing at the time, such as Brandy, Monica or Destiny's Child. As with those hitmakers, however, if youf Had My Love was a smash, rising to number one on the Hot 100 in just five weeks, action actually knocking out Martin's Live in LA Vida Loca. Thanks to Lopez's profile in the Latin community, the song also made an appearance on the Latin Tracks chart. It only reached number 27 there, but Spanish language stations were playing it. Lopez's success indicated that the Latin boomlet of nineteen 1999 was cultural as much as musical. Having established herself, Lopez did issue somewhat more Latin flavored singles for the rest of the year, including the Latin house track Waiting for Tonight, a number eight pop no 1 club hit. The 12 punch of Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez was like a siren song to the Latin pop world. If, as I said earlier, this was a universe of stars hiding in plain sight, by the second half of 1999, they wouldn't be hiding from mainstream audiences anymore. For the rest of the year, the charts were awash in stars from the Latin world who'd been working Spanish language radio for years, but now saw an opportunity to break on pop radio. At least one of these stars came equipped with both catchy songs and a famous last name. Enrique Iglesias, son of Julio Iglesias, had launched a musical career in the 90s. Totally independent of his megastar father. Enrique's three Spanish language albums for the Fonovisa label had sold 14 million copies. While he'd been considering a move into English language pop for some time, the breakthrough of Martin and Lopez accelerated Enrique's plans. He signed a new deal with interscope records in June 1999, when the Latin crossover explosion was in full force, and it took him just a couple of months to score his first number one hit. Bailamos was like Martin's Live in La Vida Loca, an intentionally bilingual hit. The title was the only Spanish in it, and it was written by a pair of Englishmen, Paul Barry and Mark Taylor. Barry would later admit that the emphasis in the title is on the wrong syllable. Iglesias sings bailamos, not bailamos because Barry did not speak fluent Spanish. As with Ricky and J. Lo, however, the whiff of Latin flavor, more than any rigorous authenticity, was all it took to send Iglesias English language breakthrough to number one on the Hot 100. By then, another Latin veteran had dropped his English language debut. Mark Anthony was a serious star in the world of salsa, a potent singer who had broken via freestyle and house music and then transformed himself into the heir to salsa legends like Hector Laveau and Willy Colon. 1. Released in August of 1999, I need to Know was like a vintage Marc Anthony hit with subtitles, all the rhythm and brass of a salsa jam with English lyrics. I Need to know reached number three in the fall of 1999, and it was followed in early 2000 by a florid Latin flavored ballad, you Sang to Me, which peaked at number two, By the way. For those who are curious, though, they both broke through on the Hot 100 in 1999. Future paramores Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony were not dating that year. They would marry five years years later. The 99 Latin boom was even boosting veteran Latin singer songwriters who were able to write for other artists. John Sakata, a Cuban American pop singer who was discovered by Emilio and Gloria Estefan, had scored a top five Latin flavored hit in 1992 called Just Just Another Day. Sakata hadn't had a major pop hit in more than five years, but in 1999 he co wrote a ballad for Ricky Martin's English language album She's All I Ever Had. The official follow up single to Live in La Vida Loca reached number two in September 1999. But possibly the biggest, most improbable chart topping success of 99 came from a 52 year old Mexican American musical legend who'd already been inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. We talked about Carlos Santana extensively in our Woodstock episode of Hit parade, including his 1999 smash Smooth. The song, co written and sung by Matchbox 20 singer Rob Thomas, was the lead single to Supernatural, Santana's star packed debut for Arista Records. The album, overseen by Arista mogul Clive Davis, was in the works months before the Latin pop explosion of 99, but the breakthrough of Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Enrique Iglesias only gave this song with its cha cha beat and prominent horns, greater commercial prospects. Smooth topped the Hot 100 in October October 1999. Thirty years after his Woodstock debut, Carlos Santana had his first number one hit and it stayed there a dozen weeks into 2000. Six weeks after it completed its number one run, Smooth won record and Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards and Supernatural one album of the Year. Six weeks after that, Santana was back on top of the Hot 100 with a second number one hit, the even more Latin flavored Maria Maria Maria, Maria Maria spent 10 more weeks at number one. Would Santana have scored two chart topping blockbuster hits on the Hot 100 and a 15 times platinum album? Without the 99 Latin explosion coming first, it's impossible to say, but it couldn't have hurt. By 2000, Latin Bumita version 1.1.0 was starting to show some strain. The number of hits these artists generated was stunning and most had unmistakable Latin rhythms, instrumentation and flavor. But every last one of them was in English. Many had been written or produced by non Latin collaborators who were deliberately aiming for for Anglophone crossover critics. And many longtime fans of Latin pop called the wave inauthentic and watered down. And it was only starting to seem more so. In the summer of 2000, Enrique Iglesias scored a second number one hit, be with youh that was certainly danceable but bore little relationship to Latin music at all. Ricky Martin moved quickly in 2000 to generate a second English language LP. Sound Loaded sold well, going double platinum. But its singles were already starting to seem like retreads. Most especially its leadoff track she Bangs, which missed the top 10, peaking at number 12. I will spare you all. The version of she Bangs sung three years later by American Idol hopeful William Hung throughout this multi year wave of crossover hits by Ricky, Jennifer and Enrique. One major Latin superstar also recognizable by a single name was waiting on the sidelines. Shakira had a following in Latin music circles arguably more impassioned than anyone's. Like the late Selena, the Colombian born Shakira Isabel Nebarak Ripol was the queen of a well defined Latin subgenre. In her case a blend of rock crossed with modern pop that echoed the sound of of such Anglo stars as Alanis Morissette. You might say Shakira was built for crossover. In an ironic footnote, Shakira's first big break back in 1993 came at a Chilean music festival where one of the judges was none other than then 20 year old father, former Menudo member Ricky Martin. Ricky picked the 16 year old Shakira to win the competition. She came in third. By the late 90s, Shakira, signed to Sony's Colombian division, had sold more than 10 million LPs across Latin America, including including her mega smashes Pies de Calzos and Donde estan los Ladrones. Sony felt strongly enough about her crossover potential that they won her a 1999 appearance on MTV's blockbuster acoustic showcase Unplugged. The televised performance introduced thousands of MTV viewers to Shakira's magnetic, sensual, hip, swiveling live presence. An album of this performance, Shakira MTV Unplugged, sold more than a quarter million copies in America in 2000, softening the ground for her long gestational crossover. Shakira's first primarily English album, Laundry Service was finally issued in the fall of 2001, more than two and a half years after the Ricky Martin breakthrough. Even more than the other Latin crossovers, Shakira's was carefully calibrated not to eviscerate her heritage. Its lead off single, Whenever, Wherever, co written by veteran superstar Gloria Estefan, combined mainstream pop friendly hooks with the distinctly Colombian sounds of Andean flutes and guitar lines played on a Charango. The long, careful setup for Shakira's Anglo breakthrough worked. Laundry Service debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 in December 2001 and spent more than a year on the album chart, going Triple Platinum by 2002, Shakira managed to to split the difference between more overtly Latin flavored tracks like the new wave and tango hybrid Objection Tango. And straight up pop balladry like the number nine hit underneath your clothes. With hindsight, Shakira's breakthrough marked the unofficial end of Latin Bumita version 1.0. The artists who became Hot 100 Stars from 1999 to 2001 continued to spin off hits, but many veered further and further away from anything resembling Latin music, from the bouncy pop of Enrique Iglesias. To the hip hop adjacent anthems of the rechristened JLo. Ironically, the artist who retreated from Anglo pop as the first wave ended was the man who had kicked it off, Ricky Martin. In 2003, Martin issued another all Spanish album, his first in five years, and he was warmly welcomed back on the Spanish language charts, topping hot Latin tracks instantly with Talvez. At the time, Martin spoke about wanting to quote, go back to my center to the beginning. Unspoken was the fact that the glare of the mainstream pop spotlight had been more intense on Ricky than for any other Latin crossover star, save perhaps Jennifer Lopez. Martin was still more than half a decade away from coming out as gay. For the rest of the 2000s and 2010s, Rick Ricky Martin scored more than a dozen Latin chart top 10 hits, but he never returned to the pop top 40. In a way, regardless of his personal motivations, Ricky's return to musical roots was well timed because in the 21st century Latin pop, even the songs that crossed over to Anglo audiences, was about to go in a more authentic sounding Spanish first direction. And though Martin had nothing to do with it, the backbone of this new trend came from his homeland of Puerto Rico. It is rare that a musical artist both invents the name of a genre and becomes the leader of that genre. But that is precisely what Ramon luis Ayala Rodriguez, aka Daddy Yankee, achieved in the 2000s. Daddy Yankee coined the term reggaeton for the blend of Jamaican dance hall, Spanish language, street tales and American hip hop that was exploding in Puerto Rico in the late 90s. The core element of the genre was the dembo rhythm taken from reggae augmented by a rap derived snare and kick drum. Daddy Yankee added the Latin suffix ton to reggae to give reggaeton its name, and having coined the term, he went on to dominate the genre, scoring what is arguably still its definitive hit. Just a couple of years into his recording career, Dy's 2004 single Gasolina not only went top 10 or top 20 in more than a dozen countries worldwide. It also amazingly cracked the US top 40, peaking at number 32. Despite featuring scarcely a word of English, it was the first fully Spanish song to crack the US top 40 since Los Lobos chart topping La Bamba in 1987. Practically simultaneously with the rise of Gasolina came another smash reggaeton single by a rising Cuban American rapper and singer, Armando Cristian Perez, who called himself Pitbull. Gulo was Pitbull's ode to ample posteriors. Featuring rap punctuation from Atlanta crunk king Lil Jon, it tied Daddy Yankees Gasolina by peaking at number 32 on the Hot 100 in 2004, the year of reggaeton's mainstream breakthrough. Rappers were not the only artists drawn to the reggaeton rhythm. The following year, Shakira was planning the next move in her global chart conquest. And once again, she wanted to play play on both sides of the street. In a bold move previously attempted by the likes of Guns N Roses and Bruce Springsteen, Shakira's plan for 2005 was to come back with a of pair pair of simultaneously conceived albums. Unlike those rock stars, however, she would issue the two albums roughly six months apart, and most ambitiously, one would be in Spanish, the other in English. Both albums would be called Oral Fixation, and volume one would be the Spanish album Fijacion Oral Volumen Uno. The lead single of the first album was called La Tortura, a duet about romantic torture featuring Spanish singer Alejandro San and a thumping reggaeton beat. In a chart run that lasted all summer, La Tortura reached an impressive number 23 on the Hot 100. And the Fijacion Oral album went gold and eventually platinum. The reason the Spanish language album had been issued first was that Team Shakira Shakira had more modest crossover commercial expectations for it. The second 2005 album, Oral Fixation Volume 2, would be Shakira's official English language successor to Laundry Service, and it was widely expected to be the greater blockbuster. But that's not how things worked out. So don't bother, I won't die don't bother, the lead single from Oral Fixation Volume 2, missed the top 40, peaking at number 42. By Christmas 2005, Shakira's second English album was shaping up as a flop, with the potential to not even go gold. But that's when Shakira and Sony Music pulled an ace out of their sleeves. Shakira's biggest pop hit ever. Oh baby, when you talk like that you make a woman go Mad Wyclef Jean, formerly of rap troupe the Fugees, had recorded a song called Dance like this for The Little Scene 2004 film Dirty Dancing Havana Nights. Jean felt the song had never lived up to its potential and when in early 2006 Shakira's label, Epic Records approached him to see if he could help revive Shakira's latest album, he proposed remaking Dance like this as Hipster Just Don't Lie. Given Shakira's own live dancing style, you might say the reboot was perfectly on brand. Reinvented with a hybrid salsa reggaeton rhythm with sampled Latin trumpets that Wyclef replicated from the prior rap hit Deja Vu Uptown Baby. The new Hips Don't Lie was a globally minded hip hop friendly anthem. Epic Rush released the single in the spring of 2006 and even reissued the Oral Fixation Volume 2 CD to include hips Don't Lie. By April, the single was in the top 40, saving the album which leapt back into the top 10 and went platinum. By June, Hips don't lie was number one on the Hot 100, giving Shakira her only American pop chart topper. For the rest of her career, Shakira would continue to stretch straddle sonic borders. She would occasionally try her hand at mainstream anglo pop like 2009's disco fueled hit she Wolf. But Shakira's biggest selling global single ultimately came when she, like Ricky Martin a dozen years earlier, was tapped into to record a World cup anthem. The 2010 track Waka Waka this time for Africa celebrated the first soccer final held in South Africa. It teamed Shakira with South African group Freshly Ground. While the song only scraped the top 40 in America, it topped charts in more than a decade dozen countries and ultimately sold 15 million copies. Jennifer Lopez, for her part, was also becoming more globally minded. At the Turn of the Tens, her smash hit on the Floor sampled Kaoma's 1990 dance smash Lambada. Remember that infectious melody? It also included rap support from Pitbull. The song reached number three on the Hot 100 in the summer of 2011 and number one on the Dance club chart. For his part, Pitbull had transformed himself from a reggaeton rapper to an all purpose club pop star. Even when his singles featured a few words in Spanish, their rhythms now had more to do with dance floors than street corners. He scored with 2009's number two Hot 100 hit I know you want me Calle Ocho. And 2011's Give Me Everything, a summer number one smash featuring singers Ne yo and Nayer and Dutch DJ Afrojack. But while Shakira, Jones, JLo and Pitbull were all attempting to keep one toe on the dance floor and one eye on the Hot 100 on Spanish language stations, reggaeton was hybridizing with everything. Enrique Iglesias had continued pursuing popular hits as late as 2010 with solid success. But by the mid 10s he had refocused his energies on the Spanish language radio dial and he began scoring some of the biggest hits of his career. Enrique's 2014 smash Bailando, not to be confused with his 1999 mostly English hit Bailamos, fused a reggaeton beat with Spanish flamenco. Bailando spent 24 weeks on top of Billboard's Latin pop airplay chart, then a record, and it even reached number 12 on the Hot 100, fueled by both digital sales and airplay on mainstream top 40 radio stations. Indeed, the sound of Spanish language music in the 2000 and tens was a hybrid, a combination of traditional balladry from artists like bachata singer Romeo Santos. And and of course, reggaeton from rising stars like the Colombian singer Jose Alvaro Osorio Balvin, known to the world as J. Balvin. These twin forces, Latin balladry and reggaeton, finally fused late in the decade, producing the biggest Latin crossover single of all time. Luis Fonsi from San Juan, Puerto Rico, was a Latin pop veteran and a sizable star on Spanish language radio. Indeed. Indeed, by the mid-2010s, an entire generation of Hispanic Americans probably couldn't remember a time he wasn't somewhere on the airwaves. Never especially hip, Fancy had been a reliable hitmaker since his career launched in the late 1990s. By the mid-2000s, fancy was largely focused on guitar based love songs such as his Latin tracks, chart topper Nada Espada Siempre or Nothing Is Forever. But sometime around 2015, Fonsi got a brainstorm. What? What if he could fuse his guitar balladry with the thump of Latin dance music? He and fellow songwriter Erica Ender at first thought that their experimental track could be a Colombian style cumbia, but eventually they landed upon the idea of pairing their melody with the dembo beat of reggaeton. After all, fellow Puerto Rican artist Daddy Yankee was still scoring Latin chart toppers as late as 2016. In the fall of 2016, Fonsi and his producers invited Daddy Yankee into the studio to record the duet Fancy had conceived under the Spanish word for for slowly, as in taking one's time both in love and on the dance floor. The word was despacito. Released at the start of 2017, Despacito was an immediate smash with Latin audiences. It topped charts in about a dozen Latin American countries, and it was on top of Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart by mid February. At this point, Despacito could have wound up a hit on the order of Enrique Iglesias Bailando, a blockbuster in the Latin world. But that's when the story took its its most unexpected turn. That spring, while on tour in Bogota, Colombia, Canadian pop megastar Justin Bieber heard Despacito and was captivated. He contacted Fonsi's management and asked if he could jump on Arena. Interestingly, for the rest of the track, Bieber sings in phonetic Spanish despite having no Latin heritage whatsoever. While the opening English verse is incongruous and slightly hokey on the Spanish corner chorus, Bieber's buttery vocals turned out to be ideal for Latin pop. He harmonized seamlessly with Fonsi. This is when Despacito exploded in the Anglophone pop world. The week the Bieber remix dropped, Despacito shot from number 48 to number nine on the Hot 100. Within three weeks it was number one, the first primarily Spanish number one hit on the big chart since Macarena 21 years earlier. True, it took the the presence of an Anglophone pop star to make Despacito a nationwide American hit. But here was the difference from Macarena and all of the Latin crossover hits from two decades earlier. Despacito remained an overwhelmingly Spanish language song with a sound that made little compromise with American pop radio. This was not live in La Vida Loca or Bailamos. Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee had fused their different corners of very authentic Latin music, but they did virtually nothing to reshape the song for Justin Bieber. Indeed, it was Bieber who had to learn a bit of Spanish and adapt to the sound of the song. Despacito was a watershed in Latin crossover pop. As we told you in our 2010s episode of hit Parade, Despacito was a record setter. It spent 16 weeks on top of the Hot 100, tying a 21 year old record held by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. More important, for this episode, Despacito kicked off what might be called Latin Bumita version 2.0. And this time the Latin stars are compromising far less than Ricky, Enrique or JLo did. Later in 2017, J. Balvin scored his first major crossover hit with the Willy William duet Mi Gente. Already a top 40 hit by September, the release of a remix featuring no less than Beyonce hurdled the song to number three on the Hot 100. When Balvin's Mi Gente reached this new peak, it was just two spots below the number one song Bodak Yellow by Cardi B. A rapper who was herself of Dominican and Trinidadian descent. Cardi made good on that heritage the following summer. In July of 2018, Cardi B returned to number one on the Hot 100 with I Like It, a reboot of Pete Rodriguez's perennial salsa classic I Like it like that. As with Despacito and Mi Gente, this hit showed how far the idea of Latin crossover had come. That's because Cardi's version of this formerly all English song was now half in Spanish. That non English content came courtesy of J. Balvin and a 24 year old old up and coming singer and rapper from Puerto Rico, born Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, but known to the world as Bad Bunny. The success of Bad Bunny in just the last three years has been remarkable. Later in 2018 he got rapper Drake to collaborate with him in Spanish no less on the number 5 Hot 100 hit MIA. And in February of this year when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez took the stage at the Super super bowl halftime show. Also joining them on stage were J. Balvin and Bad Bunny, two Latin megastars who were crossing over in America without singing much English or compromising their soul. In a way, it was a passing of the torch. Two women from Latin Bumita version 1.0, showcasing two men who were at the forefront of Bhumita 2.0. And for Bad Bunny, the impact was massive. One month after the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny's new album debuted on the Billboard 200 album chart, all the way up at number two. Billboard reported that it was instantly the highest charting all Spanish album in American chart history. By the way, on this track, Siveo Atumama, Bad Bunny is interpolating the melody of the bossa nova classic the Girl From Ipanema. Yet again, one more emerging Latin megastar is calling back to a standard from decades ago. Six decades after Ritchie Valens and Joao Gilberto, and two decades after the breakthrough of Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny is crossing over. But he is not compromising. Where will the newest Latin boom go from here? Perhaps the answer lies in the name of Bad Bunny's new album, which is still in the top three on the Billboard 200. As I speak, the album sports a rather cryptic title. It's just eight letters, Y H L Q M D L G, which stands for the Spanish phrase Yo ago lo que me de la gana, and that sentence translates to I do whatever I want. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. This show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Justin D. Wright and we also had help this episode from Rosemary Belson and Asha Saludra. June Thomas is the senior Managing producer and Gabriel Ross Roth, the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Hasta entonces palante y soy Chris Melanfe.