← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
One Year: Hey Macarena!
00:58:27
A musical phenomenon that wormed its way into our brains, and maybe never left.
Loading summary
Transcript191 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:04]
B
Hey there, Hit Parade listeners, It's Chris Melanphy. This week we're bringing you an episode from another Slate show that I think you'll like, especially if you enjoyed our One Hit Wonders episode of Hit Parade. Slate's history podcast One Year introduces you to the people and struggles that changed America One year at a Time. In each episode, host Josh Levine explores a story you may have forgotten or one you've never heard before. What were the moments that transformed politics, culture, science, religion? And how does the nation's past shape our present? The current season of one year covers 1995, a year when homegrown terrorists attacked Oklahoma City. America went online, and DNA changed the way crime times were investigated. The episode I'm highlighting for you today is about Macarena. Yes, that Macarena, the song and the dance that became the defining left field pop happening of the mid-90s. This bilingual song by a pair of Spaniards and a couple of Miami DJs they'd never met before brought joy to millions. And it topped the charts for months, winding up Billboard's number one hit of 1996 over smashes by Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, and Celine Dion. And then, just as quickly, Macarena became a cultural pariah. While I did touch on Los Del Rio's unlikely smash on Hit Parade, Josh and his team on One Year go much, much deeper into just how improbable this song's very existence was. I myself learned a lot from this, and I strongly encourage you to give it a listen. And by all means, if you like this episode, subscribe to One Year wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:17]
C
What's the story of where your name came from?
- [02:20]
A
So, like my mom and her sisters, they're Maria, Clarissa, Maria Angelica, Maria de la Luz. So my dad was like, we're not doing that. And apparently they knew somebody with this name and they were like, oh, she's like independent and classy and you know, this is a good name for our daughter. My name is Macarena. Macarena Luz Bianchi.
- [02:49]
C
It's a great name.
- [02:50]
A
Thank you.
- [02:52]
C
Macarena was born in Chile, but her name comes from Spain. It's a district in the city of Seville, which is home to the Basilica de la Macarena. That Catholic temple is a showcase for a local a statue of the weeping Virgin Mary.
- [03:10]
A
La Virgen de la Macarena is the patron saint of bullfighting in Seville.
- [03:18]
C
As a little girl in Chile, Macarena Luz Bianchi went by A nickname, Maca. When her family moved to Miami in 1982, she started hearing a bunch of other things.
- [03:31]
A
Macarena, or Macarena, that's what people called me, or they would really mispronounce it. Mace. Arena was when I'm like, no, that's not it. So it defaulted to Mac. For a long time in school, it was like, of course, Macaroni and Big Mac.
- [03:50]
C
Despite those schoolyard taunts, Macarena never thought about changing her name.
- [03:56]
A
Not at all. I loved it. Nobody here had it, which I thought was fantastic. So I liked that. It was rare.
- [04:06]
C
That rarity came under threat in the early 90s thanks to a Spanish language soap opera called Macarena.
- [04:15]
A
I was like, no, this is a bad thing, you know, because then it's gonna, like, spread.
- [04:26]
C
To her relief, Macarena, the telenovela, wasn't a big hit.
- [04:31]
D
Phew.
- [04:32]
A
You know, we continue being original.
- [04:37]
C
In 1995, she was living her best life. She was in her early 20s and a major player on the nightlife scene in Miami Beach.
- [04:47]
A
I worked the door at, like, the cool places, the cool clubs. I would decide who got in to some really cool clubs. I had designers dress me. I remember I was the first person to wear pleather pants. It was so much fun. It was, like, such a great time of expression and community, and we all connected through music. And house music was really the thing of that time. And we did not like cheesy pop music.
- [05:15]
C
She was about to like pop music even less.
- [05:19]
A
I remember this exactly. I called a friend of mine, a dj, and he was like, I can't believe you just called me. He's like, you're not gonna believe this. There's a song playing with your name. I'm like, oh, my God. And he's like, here, listen. And that's when I heard it. And I'm like, no. And I'm like, no, no, God, no.
- [05:54]
C
When you're feeling these things, is it like dead serious, horrified, or is some of it like a jokey kind of. Oh, no.
- [06:02]
A
It was 100% like, no. And I think that's when I started crying, like, you're ripping something from me. You're taking something from me. That's precious. Now it has the potential to be destroyed.
- [06:16]
C
The song she heard that day was only going to get bigger. The Macarena would become one of the most monumental hits in the history of popular music. A Spanish language smash that dominated the charts and got butt shaking at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and nursing homes. The story of its rise is A lot more complicated than the dance that made it famous. It's a tale of pre Internet virality and how a song can mutate in ways its creators never imagined. And it's a story about regret and anger. And not just from women named macarena. In the mid-1990s, a bilingual pop song brought a huge amount of joy to a huge number of people. And then very quickly, it became a cultural pariah. It's the biggest dance craze since the Twist.
- [07:10]
D
Yeah, it was annoying.
- [07:12]
E
Every part of that song is a hook.
- [07:15]
F
That song broke every conceivable barrier in pop music. You can't deny that.
- [07:38]
C
In this week's episode, A musical phenomenon that wormed its way into our brains and maybe never left. This is one year, 1995. Hey Macarena. Antonio Romero and Rafael ruiz met in 1962 in Dos Hermana, Spain, just outside Seville. They started playing music together when they were 14 years old, performing as Los Del Rio, those from the river.
- [08:38]
F
Their two very genial men. They're eternally in a good mood every time I've seen them.
- [08:47]
C
Leila Cobo is the author of Decoding an oral History of Latin Music.
- [08:53]
F
They make very upbeat, very traditionally Spanish sounding music, what they call rumba Flamenca, which is based on the acoustic flamenco guitar. And it's very celebratory music, what they do.
- [09:14]
C
In the first three decades of their career, Los Del Rio released dozens of albums and made a decent living. Their biggest fans were, in the group's own words, aging nostalgic Spaniards. Younger people in the country's metropolitan centers found their music outdated.
- [09:34]
F
You know, they were in their 40s, they looked like businessmen is the best way I can describe it. And it was very regional music. They were from Sevilla and they made this music that was very of Sevilla.
- [09:49]
C
Los Del Rio were not big stars, but they did tour internationally, sharing their old fashioned songs with the Spanish speaking world. In 1992, they went on the road in South America.
- [10:03]
F
So they were in Venezuela playing a gig and there was a flamenco dancer there. And they started improvising with the flamenco dancer and they came up with this.
- [10:16]
C
Little ditty, you know, inspired by the dancer's performance. They started to make up lyrics about a woman moving her body.
- [10:26]
F
Madalena initially was the name of the girl. Dalia. Tu cuerpo allegria Madalena que tu cuerpo es padarle allegria y cosa buena Give happiness to your body because your body is to give it happiness and good things, which I guess can be interpreted in a million sexual ways. But I don't think that was the intent of the song at all. I think they were just like, let's go have a good time.
- [10:54]
C
The woman in the song is a free spirit and a dreamer. She fantasizes about shopping at Spain's biggest department store and moving to New York.
- [11:04]
F
The only other thing that's said in the song is that she has a boyfriend called Vittorino. And when Vittorino isn't around, someone saw her with two other boyfriends.
- [11:13]
C
Los Del Rio thought this improvised song was a keeper. But the name Magdalena, that got tweaked right away.
- [11:22]
F
No, we're going to change it to Macarena. Because Macarena is the name of the Virgin that they celebrated in Sevilla and it's also the name of one of the daughters of one of the guys. And the next day during rehearsal, they kind of honed it with the musicians and they played through it. But I don't think they had major expectations for the song.
- [11:44]
C
Los Del Rio recorded this new track back home in Seville in a famous flamenco studio. If you're from the United States, you might never have heard this version, the first Macarena.
- [11:57]
F
And it starts with the hand clapping and the percussion, the cajon. It's a very percussive beat and it immediately, you know, it just catches you that they have the flamenco guitar kind of strumming and then they start singing. And of course then they go, hey, Macarena. Aha. No, they do that like that last humph at the end. I did ask him, I said, okay, who came up with that? And he said, oh no, we do that a lot in a bunch of songs. Like, they did not think there was anything remarkable about that when they wrote it. It was just. They were just writing this song.
- [12:43]
C
Los Del Rio debuted the Macarena at Seville's big spring Fair in 1993.
- [12:50]
F
And everybody has tents where they go party and they go eat and they have different groups performing music. The way they tell it, at the end of the fair, everybody was talking and playing Macarena. So I think that they realized that they had a big hit, probably the biggest hit they'd ever had up until that moment.
- [13:11]
C
Although the Macarena had been inspired by a dancer, at this point, there wasn't any choreography. It was just a traditional flamenco song performed by a couple of middle aged Spaniards who look like businessmen. But for a group that had always been behind the times, it was also kind of cool. The Macarena became Spain's Song of the Summer, a suggestive, infectious uptempo anthem for Los del Rio. This was a massive accomplishment and an unexpected one. And it was pretty much all their doing. What came next would transform the Macarena into a worldwide sensation. And it was something that those two flamenco musicians from Spain had never dreamed of.
- [14:05]
G
Hand to the front, hand to the front. Hand on your head, hand on your head. Hand on your hip, hand on your hip and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Turn. Hand to the front, hand to the front.
- [14:16]
C
We'll be back in a minute. Who's ready to feel amazing? This year, sunbasket delivers healthy meals so you aren't on the hook to shop and cook to hit your health goals. It's true, old habits die hard. So if you're looking to kick off the year with new healthy eating habits, you can get a quick start with Sun Basket Meals. Sun Basket delivers the joy of eating with bold flavors, organic produce and sustainable seafood and meats. Their award winning chefs are constantly innovating with new recipes and global tastes to keep it interesting. Each week with dozens of options, sunbasket's fresh and ready meals are a perfect hot lunch. Hack, heat and eat in minutes. You can put dinner on autopilot with easy to prep meal kits that impress for date night or win over the picky eaters in your family. Right now, SunBasket is offering $90 off and a free gift. When you order, go to sunbasket.com oneyear and enter promo code oneyear at checkout. That's sunbasket.com oneyear, and enter the promo code or one year. At the tail end of 1993, Rogelio Masin took a holiday trip to Mexico.
- [15:35]
H
I was 30 years old at the time and I remember visiting some clubs in Acapulco.
- [15:42]
C
Rogelio worked in the music industry. He was the sales and marketing manager for the US Latin Division of BMG. In the early 90s, he lived in Miami and he went out clubbing all the time. But in Acapulco, he heard a song he wasn't familiar with, and he caught a glimpse of something he'd never seen before.
- [16:05]
H
This crazy thing that it was like a line dancing and it was called La Macarena.
- [16:11]
C
The dance looked a bit like the Electric Slide, but with more hip swiveling and butt grabbing. Everyone in Acapulco seemed to know it.
- [16:20]
H
And you started mimicking what they were doing. The song was great and the dance was great and I said okay.
- [16:33]
C
The Macarena that Rogelio danced to that day wasn't by Los Del Rio. It was a cover version by a group from Argentina. A song by a Spanish duo had caught on in North America with the help of some Argentinian musicians. While we might never know who invented the line dance, it seemed to have originated in Mexico. And it took off in beach towns filled with vacationers like Rogelio.
- [17:00]
H
So I saw that and it really kind of stayed in my mind. And I went back to the US cruise ship.
- [17:08]
C
Passengers were learning the Macarena 2 and bringing it back to their hometowns. And in 1994, it surged across the border to Texas.
- [17:18]
I
When that song hit the valley, the Rio Grande Valley, it was just like a phenomenon in the clubs.
- [17:25]
C
That's Vilma Maldonado. She was an entertainment reporter in the border town of McAllen, Texas.
- [17:31]
I
La Macarena was just like an added spice. It just fit in well with our culture.
- [17:38]
C
South Texas culture included a long standing line dance tradition. Just a few years earlier, McAllen had gone nuts for Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart.
- [17:56]
I
But La Macarena was just more energetic. Oh my God. Everybody would run to the stage. It was great because we as Latinos, we had an option, you know, we didn't just have to do the country western line dance, you know, we had our own dance now, you know, that people just absolutely loved and went crazy for.
- [18:17]
C
By the spring of 1994, the Macarena had migrated into Texas in all different forms. The core of the song, that sing along refrain and those guttural huhs, those never changed, but the genre did. Banda Super Bandido put out a festive, brass heavy version. There were also a bunch of Tejano covers, including one by Grupo Mas and one by Kali Carranza. These sorts of musical variations had been a part of the Macarena from the very beginning. In 1993, Los del Rio's Spanish label had released a handful of remixes. One of them was the River Fae mix by the DJ Big Toxic and synth pop duo Fangoria. They replaced the song's traditional flamenco sound with a pulsing electronic beat. It was kind of a weird idea to remix a flamenco song. But the hope was that these new versions might appeal to a younger audience than Los Del Rio's typical crowd of aging Spaniards. And maybe if everything broke right, the Macarena might get played where flamenco records had never been heard before, a place like Cube 93 FM in Seattle.
- [19:53]
E
It was a top 40 station, you know, kind of TLC and Boyz II Men and LL Cool J. Mike Tierney.
- [20:01]
C
Was the program director at Cube 93 he learned about the Macarena in 1995 from a co worker who'd just come back from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
- [20:12]
E
And his story was just, yeah, there was this song and everywhere we went they were playing it. They were playing it in restaurants, they were playing it in nightclubs, they were playing it by the pool. There's a dance that goes with it. It was all anybody wanted to hear.
- [20:25]
C
If that vacation anecdote was to be believed, the Macarena could transform any dance floor into an all night party. Cube 93 hosted events all over Seattle. There was one coming up at a barbecue restaurant. It seemed worth a shot to play the Macarena and see what happened. There was only one problem. No one at the radio station had a copy of the song. And in June of 1995 in the Pacific Northwest, it wasn't easy to find.
- [20:55]
E
I literally don't remember how we knew that this place would have the 45, right? It wasn't even a store. It's still there. It's called La Serena Rosa and it's a stall in Pike Place Market. They sold like Day of the Dead masks and pinatas and like they had 10 records and one of them was this.
- [21:14]
C
That record included the River Fay mix of Los Del Rios song. The Macarena experiment was on the next morning. A colleague told Mike how the event went.
- [21:29]
E
Oh my God. You're not going to believe what happened last night. The dance floor was packed. Everybody already knew the dance. I've never seen anything like it. And I had to play the record basically until last call.
- [21:41]
C
Cube 93 started airing the Macarena immediately.
- [21:45]
E
You know, the request lines exploded. It's a total cliche. But it was just like that was a one listen record. Like it was special. Like I don't even speak that much Spanish. I still don't really know what's happening in the lyrics of that song. Like you don't care. It was just undeniable.
- [22:05]
C
The Macarena was undeniable in the Great White north too.
- [22:09]
J
The truth of the matter is this was pretty much a runaway train by the time it got into my hands.
- [22:15]
C
Vince DiGiorgio was in charge of dance music for the Canadian arm of bmg, the parent company of Los Del Rio's label. By the time he heard their song, it was already gaining steam in Quebec. Now it was his job to push the record into English language markets.
- [22:33]
J
It had so many hooks in it. I knew that we had to get this out fast.
- [22:39]
C
It was a rush release to get the Macarena onto Radio stations and into record stores throughout Canada. But just as that national campaign was gaining traction, something mystifying happened. Another version of the song emerged from nowhere and started rocketing up the charts.
- [22:59]
J
It basically turned into a war of the original versus the COVID.
- [23:13]
C
If those two clips sounded nearly identical to you, that was no accident.
- [23:18]
J
It was pretty close, you know, it was pretty much Xeroxed that sound alike.
- [23:23]
C
Macarena was credited to a band that no one had ever heard of, with a name that seemed suspiciously familiar.
- [23:31]
J
You know, ours was Los Del Rio. Theirs was Los Del Mar. That was no accident.
- [23:36]
C
Los Del Mar means those from the sea as opposed to those from the river. A Canadian producer put together the group. It was a shrewd business move, one that took advantage of Canadian media rules. There's a law in Canada that says a certain percentage of songs played on the radio have to be Canadian made. While Los Del Rio came from Spain, Los Del Mar counted as Canadian. That meant the COVID had a big leg up in getting airplay.
- [24:07]
J
Oh, we were livid. We had the original article that was actually composed out of someone's heart and soul. And for someone to come and copy it like it's, you know, it was a bit of a windfall for them. I didn't like it. I'm not gonna. I mean, it drove me crazy.
- [24:23]
C
If you're from Canada, the Los Del Mar Macarena is probably the one. You know, it hit number one on the Canadian singles chart in July 1995 and stayed there for nine weeks. So this was the state of the Macarena. In the early summer of 95, it was sprouting up independently all over the world in all different forms. The original, the remixes, cover versions. There was a straight up music industry war in Canada because everyone knew the Macarena was golden and wanted a piece of the action. All this was happening, yet Los Del Rio hadn't even made a music video. And despite some pockets of interest in the US, the Macarena hadn't cracked the Billboard Hot 100. And the national media hadn't noticed the song at all. But that was about to change, because something was happening in Florida, Miami at that time.
- [25:27]
H
It was crazy, and it was the happening place.
- [25:31]
C
The record executive, Rogelio Masin, knew firsthand how grabby the Macarena could be. When he got back from his vacation in Acapulco, he learned two important facts. The song had been written by a couple of guys from Spain, and those guys, Los Del Rio, were signed to the record company Rogelia worked for it Was now his job to make the Macarena a mass culture phenomenon.
- [25:58]
H
Because I knew that the dance was the key element for the song to be successful. We gather at the offices of BMG in Miami. Probably 12 girls, and they were cheerleaders. And one of the girls happened to be from Spain. And I said, listen, I have this dance that I saw a couple of times in Mexico. So I basically taught her how to dance this Macarena song.
- [26:25]
C
Rogelio says she figured out the dance in about half an hour. He then gave her some money to buy a bunch of miniskirts. Now, with the proper attire, the 12 cheerleaders were ready to go out into the world as Macarena ambassadors.
- [26:41]
H
We came up with the idea of promoting a happy hour Fridays and Saturdays. And the girls would have to dance the Macarena every 15 minutes for two hours. So all the best clubs in Miami from five to seven started to play the song with the girls inviting the customers to dance with them.
- [27:08]
C
Rogelio's cheerleader happy hour strategy worked. In no time, the Macarena was spreading all over the city.
- [27:16]
D
People were just enjoying themselves so much, you heard it everywhere. You had to stop and get up and dance it.
- [27:24]
C
Mia Navarro was the Miami bureau chief for the New York Times. She heard the Macarena for the first time at a restaurant on Ocean Drive.
- [27:33]
D
You could be eating and chatting with your friends at a table, and all of a sudden the sun would come on and everybody would get up. They would put their forks down and start dancing, and then you would go back to your dish.
- [27:46]
G
After that.
- [27:48]
C
The Macarena felt perfect for Miami, a Spanish speaking city with a strong Latin music heritage. But for the song to get really huge, it needed airplay on the city's most important FM radio station, Miami's Party Station. Power 96 for Tomorrow is thousand dollar Thursday, but Today you win $100 this hour when you hear Skilo and I wish it's coming up this hour on the power.
- [28:14]
G
Power 96 was one of the few stations in the United States that could break music that could break a record.
- [28:22]
C
That's Carlos de Yarza. His family had immigrated to the US from Cuba when he was a child. In 1995, he was working as a record producer in Miami. And he knew a lot of the DJs at Power 96 FM.
- [28:37]
G
They took chances that nobody else did. They prided themselves in finding that new next thing.
- [28:45]
C
Finding that new next thing was Carlos Mission, too. He specialized in adding bells and whistles to pop songs. And Power 96 was always hungry for exclusive tracks, music that would distinguish them from the competition.
- [29:00]
G
Basically, any pop star of the early 90s that they wanted to play, they would send it to us for a little bit of just a dash of originality or something different. You know, I would call my friends that were Jamaican rappers and say, hey, I have a new Ace of Bass record, but it sounds like reggae, so come in here and drop a few bars in the middle of, like, all that she wants. And now it's a new song. It had an edgier, more urban, more Miami Sound.
- [29:27]
C
Although Power 96 encouraged Carlos creativity, the station had a very limited view of the Miami sound.
- [29:34]
G
Power, I don't know why, would not play songs in Spanish. Their entire playlist was songs in English.
- [29:43]
C
There was one DJ at Power 96 who wanted to change that. His name was Jam and Johnny Caridae. In the spring of 1995, Jam and Johnny brought Los Del Rio's Macarena to the head of the radio station and asked to put the song on the air. The station head told him he could play it on one. He needed to go out and get a remix that met the standards of Power 96. Jim and Johnny knew the perfect guys for the job. His friends Mike Triay and Carlos de Jarza.
- [30:17]
G
So I was in a studio with Mike, probably working on six other things, and Johnny came by and said, hey, I have something for you guys. He goes, listen, the guys at Power want to play this record. And I said, what record? He said, oh, my. Oh, that thing. Okay. And I said, what's the problem? They said, well, it's all in Spanish, so it needs to have some elements of English in it. That was the ask. The ask was, they want you to do what you do to these things and put something in English on it, put a rap on it. And then Johnny dropped off the Maxi single CD and left. And I put the thing down and I continued to do whatever it was that I was doing that day because it wasn't at all a priority. I knew I would get to it, but it wasn't like a. I didn't jump on it. Let's just put it that way. So first is almost, like, researched, right? Just listen to all the different versions, Just to see what I have to play with, what. What is there. I listened to the record a bunch of times and figured out, oh, okay, it's two old men, and they're talking about this girl and she's having a good time, and, okay, what am I gonna do with this? You know, what can I do? With this from a creative point of view. Their song is about Macarena, who likes to dance. And when her boyfriend does his mandatory army service, she goes out and has fun with the friends. It's not derogatory or anything, but it paints a picture only from that point of view. And you don't get to hear her point of view. I said, you know, we don't need another male voice on this. We need her story. We need to know her point of view. So I looped a certain section of the song, instrumental section, and I started thinking and putting myself in her place and thinking about that character, right? Who is this girl they're talking about? What is she like? Where does she go? How does she dress? How does she talk? What's her attitude? Which was. The attitude was there. They provided the attitude in their description. So I knew a girl like this, right? We all, at that point, know a girl like this, or many girls like this. And Miami, it's full of Macarenas, you know, with different names. So I just started writing lyrics, writing her voice.
- [33:07]
C
How long did it take you to write the lyrics?
- [33:10]
G
I mean, have you heard those lyrics? They're not very hard. When I dance, they call me Macarena and they say, que estoy buena? They all want me, they can't have me so they all come and dance beside me Me. I mean, it's a nursery rhyme. Put it in the digital audio workstation, cut it, hit record, run in the booth, do a guide track. Then I called a friend of mine named Patty Alfaro, and I said, hey, I have this record that I'm doing for Power 96. And I said, patti, can you come here and just be this girl? So Patty said, sure. So she drove over, she laughed a lot at what I had done, and I said, just be her, just be that girl.
- [33:49]
A
Now don't you worry about my boyfriend, the boy whose name is Vitorino. I don't want him. Consent him. He was no good. So I. Now, come on, what was I supposed to do? He was out of town and his two friends were so fine.
- [34:08]
G
So she went in there and she copied the guide track and she left.
- [34:14]
C
Carlos didn't really do any remixing in the typical sense of the word. He didn't change any of the instrumentation, for one thing. He just took the existing River Fay mix, moved things around a bit, and dropped in those English verses. He also added a few samples.
- [34:31]
G
Mike Triai, my partner, he had crates upon crates upon crates of old school records. And of course, in the studio, we had a Technics turntable. Yaz was extremely, extremely formative for me. And I had that situation 12 inch. And I knew that on the B side, there was a cut where her laugh was isolated. And I said, that's Macarena. That's what she sounds like. So I was like, okay, I know where that is. I want to grab the record, put it down. Listen, put it in the digital audio workstation. There it is. I am not trying to do the Graduate. Samples really didn't come from the Graduate, but came from a remix of a George Michael song called Too Funky, which started like that.
- [35:32]
D
I am not trying to seduce you.
- [35:33]
G
It's just that cut with no music around it.
- [35:36]
D
Would you like me to seduce you?
- [35:39]
G
And I said, oh, love it. That captures the mood of this record. So I took it, not knowing then that it was the Graduate.
- [35:49]
C
Benjamin, I am not trying to seduce you. I know that. But please, Mrs. Robinson.
- [35:53]
G
It was quick. It was like, okay, let's go, let's go, let's go. Fast, fast, fast. If I were to add all the time that I worked on this project, I would say maybe 90 minutes, from research to edit, to writing, to recording vocals, to mix it, to send it out. If it was 90 minutes, it was too much. Threw it all together, put it on a dat and sent it back to power 96 and forgot about it altogether.
- [36:21]
C
The guy in charge at Power 96 FM liked what he heard. The station started playing Carlos's version of the Macarena right away. It was the end of June 1995.
- [36:32]
G
Then I start getting phone calls. Oh, my God. Are you hearing this song on par 96? I said, what song? I said, the Macarena thing you guys did. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that thing. Yeah, what about it? He goes, everybody's going crazy. I said, what do you mean they're going crazy? Yeah, they're calling and they're asking for it. I said, yeah, yeah, whatever. They'll get tired of it.
- [36:53]
C
They did not get tired of it.
- [36:55]
G
So they start calling the station. Play it. Play it. Play it. Please. Play it. Play it again. Play it a million times. My studio was called Bayside Music. So when the record starts playing, oh, here's the new one. And the Bayside Boys did this. And so that's where that name comes from.
- [37:11]
C
Not everyone was excited by what the Bayside Boys had done.
- [37:15]
A
These remixers, these tacky Miami guys.
- [37:20]
D
Ugh.
- [37:21]
C
Macarena Lous Bianchi's hometown had, to her great dismay, gone Macarena crazy. Her whole life revolved around the music scene in Miami, and now the music scene in Miami revolved around her least favorite song.
- [37:39]
A
I did a really good job of trying to stay clear of it, just being like, la, la, la, la, la, la. Like, not wanting to hear it. People could be like, it's your song. And I'm just like, mortified.
- [37:52]
C
Actually, you know what I think we should do? I think I should play the song.
- [37:57]
A
Oh, my God. Here we go. Disgusting. Oh, lord. Gross. It's about a freaking flu season.
- [38:20]
F
Really.
- [38:20]
A
Are you kidding me? Like, not only have they hijacked my name, it's about a bimbo. Oh, my God. It's so upsetting. Oh, my God.
- [38:32]
C
Despite her objections, the Bayside Boys mix would spread from Power 96 in Miami to stations all over America. Not long after Carlos De Larza's work went national, the phone rang in his recording studio.
- [38:49]
G
Good morning, this is Quayside Music. Can I help you? Is this Carlos de Orza? Yes. This is Blup, a lawyer in house from RCA Records. Who is your lawyer? And I'm thinking, oh, my God.
- [39:06]
C
Let's take a quick break. Los Del Rio wrote the Macarena in 1992, and over the next two years, it spread throughout the Spanish speaking world. It wasn't until 1995 that this song from Spain, inspired by a Venezuelan dancer with choreography from Mexico, began to sweep through the entire United States, thanks to a Cuban American producer. The only issue was Carlos De Jarza hadn't gotten permission to remix the Macarena.
- [39:55]
G
So the next phone call comes from our lawyer and he sounds something like.
- [40:01]
C
Did you guys really do this?
- [40:02]
G
And I'm like, yeah. He goes, they're going to send cease and desist orders to all of the radio stations to stop playing this immediately. You're breaking copyright, you're breaking this, you're breaking that. You got to stop. And I said, okay, fine. What do you want us to do? It's done. The deed is done.
- [40:19]
C
The label did not shut down the Bayside Boys. Given how popular the remix was, it would have been crazy to pull it off the air. So they struck a deal. The record company would keep the rights, release the remix on cd, and give the Bayside Boys a small cut of the proceeds. This was the climax of the song's unpredictable, organic evolution. Across oceans and over borders, Los Del Rio's creation always found a way. Now the Bayside Boys had created the perfect mutation. The most infectious and most ridiculous version of them all. An unauthorized remix of a different remix was the ultimate Macarena.
- [41:06]
G
It was surreal that all of this was happening. Surreal.
- [41:10]
C
On September 2, 1995, the Bayside Boys mix debuted at number 70 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the beginning of October, the record that Carlos had worked on for 90 minutes had sold 150,000 copies. People were dancing the macarena at gay bars and girl scout meetings and inside operating rooms.
- [41:33]
D
I mean, everybody did.
- [41:35]
C
La Macarena Mia Navarro wrote about the trend for the New York Times in December 1995.
- [41:41]
D
It was almost like a realization in the middle of the night, like, wait, this is a story? And I suddenly talked to Los del Rio, who couldn't explain the phenomenon. I mean, they come up with this very simple song, and that song takes off, and it's a mystery to them.
- [41:58]
C
In an interview, Los Del Rio's Rafael Ruiz said that the song's success might just be a gift from its namesake, the virgin of Macarena, the patron saint of bullfighting in Seville. In some ways, Los del Rio had lost control of their creation. The Macarena had become known for a dance they hadn't come up with a backing track they didn't play on and verses they didn't write. But the Spanish duo didn't seem to mind. The song they'd improvised in Venezuela had lifted them from obscurity. Now it was carrying them around the world, including to the United States.
- [42:39]
H
Okay, I have to fly in these guys from Spain, and I actually greet them at the airport.
- [42:45]
C
Rogelio messin had promoted the Macarena with a small army of cheerleaders. Now he was tasked with introducing Rafael Ruiz and Antonio Romero to America.
- [42:58]
H
And going from the airport to the hotel, they saw an 18 wheeler parked in the street somewhere in Miami. And they asked me to stop the car because they wanted to take a picture by the 18 wheeler, because they have never seen an 18 wheeler.
- [43:18]
C
Back at the hotel, Rogelio asked the Spaniards to open their suitcases.
- [43:23]
H
They unfolded four suits with ties and, you know, white shirts and everything. And I said, okay, well, this is not going to work.
- [43:34]
C
Rogelio bought them gold silk shirts at the Versace store to brighten up their faces on television.
- [43:41]
H
And I told them, I explained them, the TV shows are set for you to dance La Macarena. And they said, you know, we've seen the dance, but we don't know how to dance. We play flamenco. And I said, well, you're not gonna do that. So I called the cheerleaders that I had in Miami, and I had them rehearse with them.
- [44:04]
C
Did they actually try to dance?
- [44:06]
H
Yes.
- [44:06]
C
Can you Describe what that looked like.
- [44:11]
H
They were clueless.
- [44:14]
C
You can watch them get down at least a little bit in the official music video for the Bayside Boys Mix. That video came out in the spring of 1996, and it's an uncanny melding of the old and new. Ten women in tight, colorful outfits dance the Macarena and lip sync to Carlos de Yarza's English language lyrics. Los Del Rio sway back and forth, clap their hands, and sing the Spanish chorus into an old timey microphone that's dangling from the ceiling. Despite Rogelio's advice, the two men are wearing suits and white shirts. Even before the video, the Macarena dance had already spread worldwide in all different variations without the benefit of airplay on MTV, much less YouTube or TikTok. The music video was choreographed by an American living in France named Mia Fry. It simplified and standardized the moves, making them easy for anyone to learn.
- [45:22]
D
Okay, so front, front. Head, head.
- [45:26]
G
Yes.
- [45:26]
C
In August 1996, the Bayside Boys mix hit number one on Billboard's Hot 100. That month, Carlos Diarza taught Oprah America's favorite dance. Hip, hip, wiggle, wiggle.
- [45:40]
G
Turn to the left. That's right.
- [45:42]
C
We got it. Carlos thought of himself as a producer, not a performer. But in 1995 and 96, the Bayside Boys were in demand. And so they got together with a troupe of dancers and hit the road. The Bayside Boys gonna do the Macarena to get a dance floor and get ready to dance. The Bayside Boys, they played bars and teen clubs and rodeos, sometimes doing three shows in a single night.
- [46:13]
G
And they were great gigs. We were coming from a time where darker rock stuff was dominating. I said, we are going to be the anti grudge. We're going to be as glam and glitter and ridiculously fun as we possibly can be. We're going to wear very hot pleather and throw glitter around. And that was the idea. This is a way for us to just go kill it and come back to Miami with buckets of money.
- [46:43]
C
The Macarena craze was the defining mass culture experience of 1996. It was also a full employment program for anyone connected to the song. The singer from Canadian Macarena Wannabe's Los Delmar, had his own instructional videotape. We're gonna go ahead and show you our version of the Macarena.
- [47:05]
H
It's a little spicy. Okay. You bring your right arm out.
- [47:08]
C
The Los Del Mar guy had a lot of competition in the how to video space. Welcome to the Macarena Workout. Hi, I'm Gloria Quinlan.
- [47:17]
A
Hi, everyone, and welcome to Macarena Madness.
- [47:20]
F
Hi, I am Charo, and for the next 35 minutes, I'm going to show you how the Macarena has the whole world dancing.
- [47:28]
C
It wasn't just videos. There were all kinds of products that tried to capitalize on the frenzy.
- [47:34]
A
Look what we got. It's Macarena. Teddy, let's dance.
- [47:39]
C
Get your singing Macarena Teddy. At Eckerd Target and Winn Dixie. The perfect holiday gift. By the end of 1996, the Bayside Boys Mix had sold more than 4 million copies. That summer, a crowd of more than 50,000 did the dance at Yankee Stadium. I think we broke the record here. Ocarena Night. America's gymnastics heroes, the Magnificent Seven, celebrated their Olympic gold medals by performing the Macarena in red, white and blue leotards. And the Bayside Boys mix inspired some awkward gyrations at the Democratic National Convention. By this point, the Macarena was several years old. What was new was its white bread appeal, that baseball fans and Hillary Clinton had discovered its existence and started going through the motions.
- [48:35]
D
It's become something else. It's not the same thing at all.
- [48:39]
C
Mia Navarro says the Macarena's universal charm was its undoing.
- [48:45]
D
You know, once it appeals to all ages and you see little kids, you know, all the way to all people dancing it, I think it loses its coolness right then and there.
- [49:00]
C
There had been some hostility to the Macarena from the very beginning, before most of America had even heard of it. A guy in the Rio Grande Valley was printing up no Macarena T shirts. One of the nightclubs where Macarena Lus Bianchi hung out in Miami banned the song entirely. The club's marketing director said, you're either over there listening to the Macarena or you're over here with us. In 1996, the Macarena backlash went just as viral as the song had. It's boring, it's everywhere, and it's just. It's time to do something else, go on to a new song. That's what's driving me crazy. The Magarena.
- [49:40]
A
Every time you turn on the TV or the radio is the Magarena.
- [49:46]
C
I mean, come on. Seattle's Cube 93 FM had been early to jump on the macarena bandwagon in 1996. Program director Mike Tierney hopped right off.
- [49:59]
E
Eventually, we did Macarena Free Weekend. So, like, we had call out research and one of the questions was like, are you sick of this song yet? We knew. We knew when it was time to get off. That was like, clinical, and we were professionals and we knew what we were doing.
- [50:15]
C
The Bayside Boys mix would get knocked off the top of the charts In November of 96, after 14 weeks, still one of the longest runs in Billboard history, it was replaced at number one by Blackstreet's no Digging. Later that month, Los Del Rio released a Christmas remix, cementing the Macarena's place as the most overexposed cultural product of the late 20th century. Now, 25 years later, it's easier to find critical and emotional distance from the Macarena.
- [51:02]
A
Well, you know, at some point you got to, like, let it go. You know, you have to let it go.
- [51:08]
C
Macarena Loos Bianchi is now in her late 40s and works as a personal development coach. She says she's made peace with Macarena, the song.
- [51:18]
A
You can't walk around with this existential dread or hatred or wound. I think in my evolution as a human being and growing up, you know, I gotta get over this, whatever, it's okay. Let me celebrate with the people who enjoy it instead of, like, focus on, like, the horror, the horror of it.
- [51:40]
G
Even before Macarena, I understood that I was built more to be behind the scenes.
- [51:48]
C
Carlos de Larza had a short post Macarena career as a performer, but he never got all that comfortable on stage. He's now in charge of marketing and communications for Miami's St. Thomas University.
- [52:01]
G
So Macarena was, I believe, maybe it was necessary at that time not just for music. It was just a time that needed a little bit of a lift, a little bit of just pure fun without anything attached. It was nothing but good feelings. It was nothing but embracing. It was nothing but acceptance. And I never had a bad time anywhere. All over the United States, the Bayside.
- [52:29]
C
Boys and Los Del Rio will share a musical connection forever. But Carlo says the two groups have never spoken.
- [52:38]
G
Not once, not for a second, not for nanoseconds. We're making all these guys all this money and they haven't even sent us a chorizo from Spain. So I'll be happy with a gift basket. Let's go, guys. Put it together. A little red wine, a little chorizo. Come on, bring it.
- [52:53]
C
We weren't able to connect with Los Del Rio either. But they did speak to the author Leila Cobo. I asked her how they think about their contribution to the world.
- [53:04]
F
They think it's amazing that they've been able to bring happiness to children that are five years old and people that are 80 years old and it still happens. It's a song that makes people happy.
- [53:17]
C
Today you can find the Macarena on a whole bunch of lists of the worst songs ever. It should be recognized as a landmark, a Latin anthem that helped pave the way for crossover hits like Despacito. And after all these years, it's still a vessel for reinvention. In 2019, the rapper Tyga created his own rendition and brought an older, paunchier Los Del Rio along for the ride. Looking back, it's remarkable that the Macarena ever became a thing, that an old fashioned flamenco group wrote a tune that took over the world at the same time. When you listen to that original recording, the Macarena feels inevitable. Even without the dance or the electronic beat or the English verses or the music video, it's just really, really catchy.
- [54:36]
F
And Macarena was so simple that it allowed everybody to be part of it. Do I think the song is a masterpiece? No. But you can't prevent people from feeling what they feel when they hear music.
- [55:02]
C
If you like what you're hearing and want to support One Year, you should sign up for Slate plus members. Listen to all of our episodes ad free and they get an exclusive episode at the end of our season that's all about the making of our series on 1995. One way to sign up for a subscription is directly in your Apple Podcasts app. Just go to Apple Co oneyear next time on the final episode of One Year 1995, just as the Internet was taking hold, an article about online pornography threatened its future.
- [55:40]
D
When this thing came out, it became clear that this could be really dangerous. If people started to think, oh, it's just a wash in pornography, people could use this kind of information to say, oh, we need to lock this thing down before it gets out of hand.
- [56:11]
C
This episode was produced by Evan Chung, Madeline Ducharme and me, Josh Levine. Additional production help came from Shana Roth. This episode was edited by Laura Bennett, editorial direction by Lo and Liu and Gabriel Roth. You can send us feedback and ideas and memories from 1995 at1yearlate.com and you can call us on the one year hotline at 203-343-0777. We'd love to hear from you. Our mix engineer is Merritt Jacob. The artwork for One Year is by Jim Cook. Leila Cobo's book is Decoding Despacito, an oral history of Latin Music. Special thanks to Alfred Soto, Holly Allen, Katie Rayford, Asha Soluja Amber Smith, Seth Brown, Rachel Strom, June Thomas and Chow Tu. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with the season finale of one year 1995. If you're listening to this show, then you're probably a fan of unique and interesting stories I want to tell you about Pocket. Pocket is a website and app that finds the most interesting, thought provoking and entertaining articles from trusted sources around the Internet. Puts them all in one place. Low on time. Pocket lets you save articles as well as anything else you find online like videos, recipes and shopping pages to your personal Pocket for digging into later. Pocket will even read the stories you've saved aloud to you like a podcast of back to back articles. Want to go deep on a topic? They also have some incredible curated collections that are hand selected by Pocket editors or an expert Pocket partner like me. Go to getpocket.com slate to check out the one year collection and get a behind the scenes look into some of the articles we used as we created this show.