Guilty Pleasures: Lou Bega – A Little Bit of Mambo

There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.

In 1999 pop music was in a weird place. Around this point boy bands and Britney Spears had dominated. Everyone wanted to hear something they could dance to. Now this also give birth to various re-emerging anti-pop sounds. I previously covered this with The New Radicals. This was also during the days of the Swing and Big Band Revival. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, sits Lou Bega.

Lou Bega kicks off this CD with applause (mildly presumptuous for Track 1 of your debut album), the polite introduction “Ladies and Gentleman this is Mambo #5” and immediately we are treated to one of the catchiest one hit wonders of the 90’s. The supercalifragalisticBRAGadocous track begins running down the list of all the girls Bega has been with. There’s Monica, Rita, Sandra and Mary just to name a few. It’s a toe-tapping track that will always get stuck in your head.

Now while the song is a guilty pleasure to many people, does that constitute the entire album being defended? Well the second track will actually answer that question with a resounding YES. Baby Keep Smiling is nice blend of pop, hip-hop and 1920’s doo-wop. It’s the stand-out track of the album and also contains one of the best lines in music history: “I put on my glasses/Then tell you how sweet ya ass is.”

The album keeps raising the bar track after track. Baby Keep Smiling is my favorite track on the album, but Can I Tico Tico You is a close second. The song is all dance, but still has a creepy tone. Bega’s track about obsession contains the strange sampling choice of a girl screaming. It also has a heavy and eerie tenor saxophone empathizing the catchy melody.

I must say that Bega was doomed to fail. The Big Band Revival was already on the way out and even with the pop/dance twist on it, it wasn’t going to last very long. Regardless you can’t say the guy didn’t have style. He was always in a white zoot suit and sporting his Cab Callaway mustache; if it was 1930, it’d be easier to believe songs like I Got a Girl and 1+1 = 2 where Bega continues to brag about his many lovely ladies.  In fact, in I Got A Girl he claims to have a girl on every continent as well as outer space. Apparently he’s “got a girl everywhere.” The songs are all outrageous and stupid, but Bega doesn’t pretend they’re not. It’s in his overly confident and completely serious way that he best shows off the humor of the songs.

The closing track is a little weak: it begins with Bega walking off the stage and being approached by the concert promoter. The audience loves Bega and wants an encore, but his band has already packed up and left. This is literally 20 seconds after the song ended. I’ve thrown concerts before… I’m lucky if a band can load out in 20 minutes. Clearly Bega is trying to lie his way out of playing one more song. But the promoter is persistent, he offers Bega the house band. To Bega’s dismay they’re a salsa band and he is the (self-proclaimed, I assume) king of Mambo, but Bega makes due.

The closing track Mambo Mambo sounds like a Ricky Martin B-Side with Bega rapping to the audience the difference between Salsa and Mambo. It’s a cute idea but the fact of the matter is that Bega isn’t exactly a mambo expert or even a music expert.

I will say that he’s a pop expert. 13 perfectly catchy tracks will promise to keep your toes tapping. I bought this bad boy for $1 at a flea market, I’m pretty sure you can find the exact same deal. If you see it, take it.