Lou Bega
Mambo No. 5 (CBMG Berlin Musik GmbH 67033)

Of course this song attained "Macarena" levels of irritation as it permeated society back in summer '99, slowly overtaking middle America through obligatory airplay at weddings and bat mitzvahs. My guess is that a Chipmunk version followed at some point, and undoubtedly Weird Al weighed in with his two cents on the matter.

Now, one would come to the Loud Bassoon Record Guide expecting a huge slam of Lou Bega and his definition-of-a-one-hit-wonder "Mambo No. 5," but instead I stand up proudly in support of it.

As predicted, the song had a shining moment of ubiquity and fell hard as summer turned to fall, retaining its lifeline with impossible latecomers and grandparents. I'm sure even as we speak, hundreds of weddings are using it to get the folks on the floor to show off their clunky, recently-learned latin dance steps.

But let's take the "Mambo No. 5" on its own merits. It is as fresh a pop song as "Lucas With the Lid Off," to which it is quite similar, though much less brainy. The song is outstanding, one of the great high points of the glorious Top 40 bubblegum phase American radio went through in 1998-99. It was one of Top 40's golden ages, like 1982-83 and 1973-74 before it.

Only about once a decade does this fortuitous hurricane of ear-candy blow through the metaphorical ocean of American radio and slice it in half like that island that was unmetaphorically destroyed off of the Carolina coast recently. I hope people are recognizing this and enjoying the pleasant destruction, just as I hope the residents of that island that got split in half are enjoying the delicious supplies being brought to them by the Red Cross as paltry repatriation for their shattered lives.

Yip, I am not sure whose side I ended up on with that so-called point. I better stop mixing my metaphors. To return to the previous so-called point, Lou Bega's brilliant piece of claptrap was definitely designed from the get-go for grannies and babies to eventually latch onto, so it is likely that the song will be extremely annoying to regular folks who are subject to its severe overplaying. But how can you not at least smirk when you're walking through a mall and hear Bega singing "A Little Bit of Mickey" as you pass the Disney Store?

The trouble with these golden ages of bubblegum pop is that some songs end up needing to be sacrificed so that the others can be saved. The natives will throw this one and "Livin' La Vida Loca" into the volcano so that the next generation will be able to sava the flava of "Where My Girls At" by 702 and "Unpretty" by TLC.

But I must warn against blindly following the throng as they dance ritualistically toward the fire god, their naked breasts and penises bespeaking of their ignorant obedience to their instincts. (I say to myself so you don't have to: what the hell?) "Mambo No. 5," with its cleverly sampled Perez Prado breaks and insistently dopey chorus, will be your most secret, guiltiest pleasure many years from now, as you move on with your life, taking up a conventional career back on the mainland and forgetting how you used to dance in the sand to the Latinate rhythms that defined you in that strange summer of 99.

You will hear it in the back of your head in the moments before you release yourself into unconsciousness each night, your dreams muddled with its crowd-pleasing antics, your shame at disowning it ever growing until regression therapy enables you to defiantly say, without qualification, that you like that song.

So embrace it now, save yourself the trouble. And realizing that I have devoted hundreds of words to a two-track CD single without really talking about the music that much, I now offer that this import single contains the radio edit as well as the extended mix of the song … they are similar, but one is longer.

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Review by Mo' Temps