NorteñoBlog has pretty much made its peace with boring ballads about corazones and the hombres who break/nurse/fondle them, so this week’s Mexican Top 20 comes as a pleasant surprise. Most of the new songs are fast! Or at least midtempo, which often sounds like “fast” around this lot. (When Arrolladora’s devious mujer destroyed their collective soul, she also apparently destroyed their ability to play faster than 60 bpm.) Almost every inch of this new batch is perfect, from the bottom to the top:
At #20, Leandro Ríos, of superfun rhyming exercise “Debajo del Sombrero” fame, is now a no-good cheating bastard. But he’s really tortured about being caught “Entre Ella y Tú,” so that’s gotta count for something, right? Oh wait — HE’S NOT TORTURED AT ALL. As long as you’re content with the amount of Leandro you’re getting, what’s the problem? The jaunty accordion gave him away.
We all know insufferable (and occasionally kickin’) Brooklyn indie bands love naming themselves after animals. But did you know that kickin’ (and occasionally insufferable) indie norteño bands also dig animal metaphors? And were you aware that writing intros is not NorteñoBlog’s strong suit? Read on!
Los Inquietos del Norte started one of norteño’s most successful artist-directed indie labels, Eagle Music, in 2002. Along with their fellow Bay-area natives Los Amos de Nuevo Leon, Los Inquietos helped create the sound of hyphy norteño, the party punk version of bro-norteño, all lickety split tempos, simple accordion slashes, and lyrics about wild debauchery. Inquietos quickly went their own way: though their songs still sounded hyphy, they dropped the hyphy name and started adding wobbly violin-based ballads to their repertoire. They also grew their record label. Along the way they’ve cut distribution deals with mom-and-pops and majors. I’m not sure how their new album De Noche Enfiestado is being promoted, but I did hear its wobbly violin-based lead single “No Dudes De Mi” on midwestern corporate radio the other day, so somebody’s pushing it.
In addition to their Eagle mascot, Inquietos are into perro y gallo metaphors. NorteñoBlog has discussed their wobbly, weirdly operatic single “Como Perro Amarrado,” which is sort of like Jamey Johnson’s “Dog In the Yard” without the rue. Like, serious lack of rue. The Meza brothers’ vibrato is where rue goes to die. Their profane and violent “La Cerre el Hozico al Perro” has more energy, and I’m partial to “Los Tres Gallasos,” if only for the accordion. Rosalio Meza has some fast licks at his disposal, but he’s not afraid to simply hang out on one repeated note, frowning his instrument’s approval at the lyrics. There’s a cultivated carelessness in this bunch.
First, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: a crap recording of Roberto Tapia’s new banda single “No Valoraste.” It’s trad and jubilant. You’re welcome.
But now it’s time for a new, probably never-to-recur NorteñoBlog feature called “Who Played It Better: Ariel Camacho or These Dudes?” Ariel Camacho, you’ll remember, has been a favorite of the blog ever since I heard his excellent El Karma album at the beginning of the year. He played the requinto guitar — tuned higher than normal, prone to virtuoso displays — and led a band, Los Plebes del Rancho, that also included a rhythm guitar and a tuba. Omar Burgos’s tuba managed to function as bass, percussion, and lead instrument all at once. Then in February Camacho died in a car accident at the way-too-young age of 22. Tributes followed, and outpourings of grief, and — this is where our new feature comes in — bitings of his post-Sierreño style.
So I ask you, loyal NorteñoBlog reader: WHO PLAYED IT BETTER?
En otros ocasiones cuando The Singles Jukebox ha escrito sobre Gerardo Ortiz, ha escrito cosas felices, pero ahora… ¿tal vez estábamos cansados? Rebecca Gowns dice Gerardo está cansado — o mejor, “El Cholo” está “sloppy,” “loping and dragging.” Es justa. Multiples criticas escribieron sobre el shoutout a El Chapo, pero él es solo un parte del paisaje aquí.
Escribí:
Accordionist Marito Aguilar is a badass of Randy Rhoads proportions, in that I imagine certain young shredheads — albeit with diametrically opposing hairstyles — buying the CDs of Gerardo Ortiz or Ozzy Osbourne just so they can retire to their bedrooms and dissect the flurries of fingers. Aguilar is the best reason to hear Ortiz’s latest album; given free reign by the star, the studio pro came back with some jaw-dropping chromatic French cafe shit. The drum sound, boomy but articulate, makes me wonder whether someone found a way to mic Luis Navarro’s sticks. Otherwise, Ortiz’s living-the-good-life corrido is… good enough. It’ll be an eternal singalong anthem for Sinaloa partisans, same way I still get a kick from hearing Nelly shout out Plaza Frontenac.
NorteñoBlog is un poco freaking out this week, because if you look way down at Billboard‘s Regional Mexican airplay chart, you’ll see Roberto Tapia has a new single called “No Valoraste.” Unfortunately Tapia hasn’t finished the video yet, nor has the song hit any of the streaming services I’ve checked, so I have no idea what “No Valoraste” sounds like. NorteñoBlog doesn’t always enjoy Tapia, but when I do, I prefer his popsingles. And it’s not just me! My son, who’s kind of rockist but also digs Kidz Bop and EDM-pop, normally hates when I turn on the Spanish language radio stations, but as we pulled into Grandma and Grandpa’s driveway the other night we found Tapia’s monster hit “Mirando al Cielo,” and he was grooving. It actually delayed our triumphant race to the grandparents’ door, as we sat in the car and seat-danced. Um, Pick to Click!
So Tapia’s latest will either be profoundly great or profoundly disappointing, is what I’m saying.
Thank heavens for “Mirando al Cielo,” from whence cometh our help, because this week’s charts are slim pickings. The best newish tune is by Banda MS: “Piénsalo” is the higher of their two songs inside the Hot Latin top 20, and it’s uncharacteristically fast, if not too special. MS typically hits with the stickiest of treacly ballads, and these concoctions have brought them untold fame and Youtube hits. Their older top 20 hit this week, “A Lo Mejor,” has gotten some click-baity help from Remex’s big-budget novela video, in which infidelity and mistaken identity somehow result in stabbing and crashing cars. Desafortunadamente, to make sense of all that you have to listen to “A Lo Mejor.”
Elsewhere, Joan Sebastian’s epic death bump evaporates as we say adios to his four revived hits; La Séptima Banda score a second decent airplay hit, though it’s no “Bonito y Bello”; Pitbull continues to be awesome; and people evidently continue streaming “Propuesta Indecente,” now at 107 weeks on the chart. Think about that. When “Propuesta Indecente” came out, NorteñoBlog’s guinea pig WAS NOT YET ALIVE. (“Propuesta Indecente” has always been at war with alfalfa hay and cilantro.)
After speaking with a big Máximo Grado fan the other day, I fear NorteñoBlog may have given short initial shrift to that group’s really pretty good “Unas Heladas,” currently at #14 airplay. So here it is, en realidad, this week’s Pick to Click:
These are the top 25 Hot Latin Songs and top 20 Regional Mexican Songs, courtesy Billboard, as published August 22.
Today we extend a warm NorteñoBlog welcome to Manuel Martinez-Luna. Manuel is a 31-year-old New York native, having cut a swath from Yonkers to Queens. You know him as the blog’s topcommenter, which has led to an exciting new job (tambora roll…) writing for NorteñoBlog! (First article coming soon.) (No, there’s no money in it.) In his spare time, Manuel works as a compilations coordinator for The Orchard, a digital distribution arm of Sony Music, creating Regional Mexican compilations under the brand name Club Corridos. (Nice logo.) In alphabetical order, his favorites artists are Los Alegres del Barranco, the Beatles, Vicente Fernández, Ratt, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
We recently talked by phone for almost an hour about growing up in Yonkers, how Manuel came to love norteño music, how Hispanic and white people view narcocorridos, and his karaoke triumphs and fails. Here’s the edited transcript:
NorteñoBlog: What was the first popular music you ever remember loving? How did you hear it? What did you love about it?
Manuel Martinez-Luna: I would say it was hip hop. I got more aware of the artists and particular songs in middle school. Jay-Z and, when I used to live in Yonkers, the Lox — I still listen to them. For the most part it was the beats, the instruments they used, but also the lyrics — some songs might have been a little bit more street-oriented or violent, but a lot of the the things they said I could definitely relate to. The struggle, growing up in the inner city, was not that uncommon from the type of life I had — and not just me, but a lot of people can relate to not having enough money to get school clothes for the new year, or whatever it may be. Your plumbing doesn’t work during the winter, so you have to heat up your bath water in a big pot and then pour it over yourself to take a shower. Like the landlord, sometimes you ask him, “Come by and fix my damn pipes!” You know, they take a while, and you can’t show up to school smelly.
NB: What kind of music did your parents listen to? Did you find yourself liking what they liked, rebelling against their taste, or what?
MML: All Mexican music, primarily rancheros — you know, Vicente Fernandez, Antonio Aguilar — stuff like that. My dad would listen to corridos, but mostly more old school stuff — Los Alegres de Terán, Los Huracanes del Norte, like those guys? My mom would listen to very obscure female groups, I can’t remember their name right now. I think their name was Las Jilgueras something… [NB note: Las Jilguerillas?]
Honestly, when I was younger, I just didn’t get it — I thought it was kind of hokey and too old school or whatever. I would hear it in the background all the time, Saturday mornings my mom and dad would put on their music and we would go about our business, but at that time I just didn’t get it. You know, I wasn’t into it.
¡Ya era hora! Banda El Recodo, los papás corteses de Sinaloa, suenan más emocionados en su nuevo sencillo “Mi Vicio Más Grande.” A The Singles Jukebox, Rebecca A. Gowns escuchó “the ‘My Way’ of 21st Century banda.” Yo escribí:
The Sinaloan institution Banda El Recodo is closing in on 80 years old, and they haven’t stayed at the forefront of their genre all those years by happy accident. Bandleader Alfonso Lizárraga has tailored Recodo’s recent singles with sartorial precision, filling gaps in the regional Mexican playlist. In 2009 he adapted “Dime Que Me Quieres” from a ballad into a cumbia because there were no romantic cumbias on the radio. Four years later Recodo went the opposite direction, plugging “Vas a Llorar Por Mi” into the spot earmarked for “melodramatic stop-start ballads about death.” (You didn’t know you wanted that, did you? RECODO DID.) Now the team returns with their liveliest song in years, a furious minor-key chops killer about living the good life. The theme is nothing new, but the furious minor-keyness picks up where spinoff band Recoditos left off two years ago with “Mi Último Deseo.” Recodo races through that two-minute slot with thicker brass and, in Geovanni Mondragón, a less personable singer, though I do admire his trembling vibrato in the chorus, seconds before his bandmates wallop him with a giant hemiola.
[7]
A crowded field of contenders met this week, selling themselves to a fickle public by trying to outshout their rivals. As they took their places on the public stage, arranged according to their polling numbers, some sported relatively fresh faces while others had clearly been here before. Broadcast to the masses, they broached the familiar topics of family values and the plight of the working class. They touted their hardscrabble origins and titanic work ethics. One challenger had amassed unimaginable wealth and made certain everyone in the audience knew it. The contenders spared no expense, and certainly no words, in their attempt to move one step closer to claiming the world’s most powerful and coveted title.
I refer, of course, to NorteñoBlog’s prestigious Pick to Click.
There are eight new songs, to be exact, since the last time we checked the Mexican radio charts five weeks ago. I’m afraid I can’t assign their singers one-to-one correspondence with the… unique field of candidates seeking the Republican nomination for U.S. president. Although both groups contain mostly men — in this thought experiment, the part of Carly Fiorina will be played by Los Horóscopos — the Mexican radio stars are not, so far as I can tell, frightening power-mad scaredy cats. Here are their strong suits, from lowest polling to highest:
At #20, Diego Herrera sings a tribute to the families who’ve stood behind their famous norteño singing sons. This could have lapsed into sap, but Herrera is a masterful singer who lands each of his many words with precision and dexterity. Plus he uses the word “chingones” over and over. (Since I don’t think Miss Manners has covered it, this Latina article dissects how appropriate the word is for polite company. Opinions vary!)
At #19, the man with the continent’s best voice, Julión Álvarez, sings about love (as he does) in one of his better recent tunes, a fast banda. He’s also the only person I know who has convincingly sung the word “irremediablemente.”
Los Tucanes and their rich friends Código FN are at #18, singing a corrido about the big name bandas who play their fancy parties, where the liquor bottles flow like spit valves and muchachas dangle from arms. How did our hosts get all their money? Don’t ask questions!
At #17, the members of La Estructura, a relatively new quartet/quintet, are weary. Their gauntlet of negotiating the nightlife and trying to win back a pretty mujer has tuckered them out. As the tubist blarts out sad counterpoint the lead singer stops traffic to block his ex’s SUV and plead his case. Improbably, this works.
Mariachi Pedro Fernández is at lucky #13 with a cover of Leandro Rios’s excellent rhyming exercise/claim to hardcore ranchero roots, “Debajo Del Sombrero.” The song remains great, but Fernández’s take sounds too smooth, even perfunctory, as though he and his well tooled mariachi machine are racing through it.
Up at #9, Fidel Rueda insists, over speedy banda, that he is not el mandadero, for whom he is sometimes confused by assholes. Rather, la moneda está volteada, y Rueda es él que manda. Merely for serving as a furious rebuke to some of those frightening power-mad scaredy cats, this would be a front-runner for Pick to Click status. Turns out it’s a fine song, too. I’ll entertain a motion from the floor.
I mean, you knew it wasn’t gonna go to those Sebastianes or Arrolladora ballads, they just kept crying all over the place.
(BTW, the top 3 songs remain unchanged from five weeks ago. Meet the new jefes, same as the old jefes.)
These are the Top 20 “Popular” songs in Mexico, as measured by monitorLATINO. Don’t confuse “Popular” with the “General” list, which contains many of the same songs but also “Worth It,” “See You Again,” “Cheerleader,” and a Kalimba song that strums along forgettably.
It is the longstanding position of NorteñoBlog that the puro sax styles of Chihuahua and Zacatecas would improve with the addition of more terrible “sax” puns in the titles. This week’s roundup is all Chihuahua (“Saxo Con Mi Chihuahua”? nononono), but stay tuned, as Zacatecas continues to prolifically birth more sax bands than any of us can handle.
Los Bravos de Ojinaga have just released their 10th album, A Más No Poder (Azteca) (alternate title: Saxo Toda La Noche), and it’s everything you like about the puro Chihuahua sax: accordion and sax lines intertwining around the singer, spritely dance grooves, and yearning harmonies. It’s also everything you dislike: namely, it gets kind of samey after a while and it never peaks. This is music for house parties and cleaning up after them. (Saxy norteño albums really make me step up my sweeping and mopping game.) The video for Los Bravos’ romantic single “Comprendelo” features a cuckolded cowboy and Jesus on an accordion.
Speaking of el saxo y la salvación (there’s your album title!), Los Salvajes de Chihuahua recently released album number 11, Soltaron la Rienda (Goma). In an unusual case of puro Chihuahua sax distinctions being cost-effective, “Algo de Ti” is a better lead single than “Comprendelo” because it throws in some additional beats and minor chords where you don’t expect them. A cursory listen to Soltaron makes me think Los Salvajes pay more attention to their pop hooks than Los Bravos do, and Edgar Estrada sings with an appealing rasp. Pick to Click!
I feel like we’re giving short shrift to the rival puro sax style of Zacatecas. I know this comes as a huge disappointment. Whatever. The puro Houston fishermen Los Pescadores del Rio Conchos have a new single out, “Fui Un Mal Amor” (Azteca), in which they harmonize and lament. El Rio Concho, as you know, is a Rio Grande tributary that flows through Chihuahua and contains 12 endemic species of fish. It’s also the title of a Richard Boone Western film from 1964. If I knew more about movies, I might be able to tell you how sussing out the distinctions in puro sax songs is like doing the same with Westerns, where type scenes manage viewer expectations and little moments can make all the difference. Forthcoming thinkpiece/album title: Mal Saxo Es Mejor Que No Saxo.
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