Ladies and gentlemen…
Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…), by Lou Bega (his 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 29th August – 12th September 1999
…this is Mambo Number Five. Autumn may have begun while this record was at number one, but the Latin summer of 1999 is still going strong. As with both our previous Latin chart-toppers – ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ and ‘Mi Chico Latino’ – yes, this is cheesy, and yes, this is Latin music with all the raw edges softened. But I challenge anyone to listen to this and not smile, just a bit. And even today, you throw this on at any kids party, or wedding, hell even at a funeral, and the dancefloor will light up.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a mambo at number one. Forty-four years, to be exact, when Rosemary Clooney scored her second chart-topper with ‘Mambo Italiano’ (which was mambo in name more than anything else), and Pérez Prado had an instrumental smash with ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’. It was Prado himself, the King of Mambo, who originally recorded ‘Mambo No. 5’ in 1949. He had also been back in the charts in 1995, despite dying in 1989, when ‘Guaglione’ made #2 thanks to a feature on a Guinness advert.
Lou Bega, a German-born Italian-Ugandan rapper, had the idea to sample ‘Mambo No. 5’ and turn it into a modern pop-rap song while living in Miami, where he had been turned on to Latin music. The brass band, and the shouts, are that of Prado; but Bega added lots of ad-libs, and some wonderfully dated record scratches and tapes-getting-all-tangled-in-the-deck sound effects (kids these days will never know the pain…)
And of course, he also added the words. Seven ladies that went down in history. Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, and Jessica. There is a particular joy in knowing someone by any of these names, and of trying to crowbar their accompanying line into conversation. I used to work with a Rita (all I need), while I also know a Mary (all night long), but my personal goal is to meet a Sandra (in the sun).
What’s interesting is not just how big this genre of music suddenly became in the summer of 1999, but how much songs like this and ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca’ remain in the public consciousness, far more than the Westlife’s many ballads and anonymous dance tunes. Lou Bega managed one more minor hit in the UK with the follow-up to this, ‘I Got a Girl’, in which he yet again lists his many girlfriends. He remains active, still dressing like Pablo Escobar on his summer holidays, still peddling his schtick (his most recent release on Spotify samples ‘Macarena’).
Still, he’ll always have ‘Mambo No. 5’. Stick a random pin on a map and chances are you’ll hit a country where this record made #1. In France it was there for a mind-blowing twenty weeks… The success wasn’t all positive though, as Bega and his producers spent seven years locked in a legal battle with Pérez Prado’s estate, before a judge ruled that the writing credits be split evenly. Meanwhile my favourite story connected with ‘Mambo No. 5’ is that it was originally chosen as the theme song for the US Democrats’ 2000 convention, before someone pointed out that having Bill Clinton walk out to A little bit of Monica in my life wasn’t such a hot idea…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
It’s impossible to hate this song. You might get annoyed by it due ot overplay, but it’s just so guileless, so charming, so gosh darn catchy. Like “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, there’s just too many hooks thrown in the mix to not enjoy.
Abject terror. The worst thing to happen to ears in the 20th century. The tinnybop, push button false instrument sound like ‘Living La Vida Loca’, combined with the excesses of ‘look at me, I’m heterosexual and I bump women’s ladygardens non-stop’ boorish and downright slight rapeyness attempting to be justified by ‘party’ music. Execrable excrement.
Just out of interest, and not that I disagree with your statement that music in the late-nineties was sounding increasingly computer generated, but what makes this any more ‘push-button’ than the Geri Halliwell and Westlife songs that you’re much less harsh on…?
They didn’t sound as, I don’t know what the correct music terms are, ‘artificial’ somehow. I know it’s to do with the production and mixing etc but in these two particular examples it’s so obvious that they’re not actual instruments, say horns for example, whereas in most push-button pop it’s at least mixed well enough that you don’t actively think ‘oh those are so obviously not the real instruments’ whilst they’re on. It’s grating to me, and that’s just me.
I’d say Mambo No. 5 probably didn’t have a real instrument within 500 yards of it, apart from the Perez Prado samples. But in writing about LLVL I saw an interview with the guitarist that played on the track. Maybe it’s more in the mixing, as I think it’s quite compressed, and sped up quite a lot.
It’s a great upbeat pop track, guaranteed to fill a dance-floor at a party. I do enjoy a bit of Mambo, and lols at the Clinton quip. 🙂
Regarding the comment about shagging around, it’s only slightly-rapey if it’s not consensual, and there’s no information here that he was doing a Bill Cosby or anything else, or seeing all the girls at the same time. Naming them all might be bragging and unfair if they were real actual women, but made-up names is fine. And to be fair, as for non-heterosexual men, they/we are way worse at investigating mostly-shaven gentleman gardens, and I speak from personal experience! If you’re not cheating on anyone then it’s all fine, no-one gets hurt if you’re upfront about everything and don’t so anything stupid or inconsiderate or personal-space invading. Everybody’s free (to feel good) as someone wise once said, and not everybody wants (or is able to get, or is cut out for) a serious relationship.
I hope the Clinton story is true…
I always got the impression that Lou Bega was a try-hard, and that he hadn’t actually been with any of the girls mentioned in the song. There’s no suggestion of any creepy power-dynamics either. But now you’ve got me imagining a gay version… ‘MANbo No. 5’?
Now totally hypocritically, I’d have no objection to that at all.
You’d need a much longer list/chorus I suspect… 🙂
It’s a pure dance track but – ‘Livin’ la Vida Loca to me…is much better…the dynamics are much better in that one…it’s strong. This one starts like crap to me…of course I’m an outsider in this music genre.
That Clinton story is LOL. It’s just OK for me, pretty reliant on his charisma, which doesn’t connect for me.
I really hope that story is true. Seems an odd choice of song, but then Trump has his YMCA, so who knows
I want to go to the same funerals you do.
Well I’ll definitely have it played at mine 😉