LOU BEGA – "Mambo No.5 (A Little Bit Of…)"

Hmm. I don’t associate this with office parties or any other type of “forced fun”. The principle association I have for “Mambo No 5” is that it was the theme for Channel 4’s coverage of the cricket – so it’s happy days actually. The team had been in the doldrums for some time but throughout the C4 years, the England team (at least at Test level) got better and better, mirroring in fact the more modern, less complacent coverage that the sport got after C4 took it from the BBC. All of this culminated in the glorious summer of 2005, with the regular clatter of Aussie wickets resulting in the return from the resultant ad break with a brief sting of MN5 (usually that weird “Aargh” shout that punctuates this song regularly) just as you’d begin to settle back on the sofa having been high-5ing your nearest mate. Or settling in for the morning of the Edgbaston Test on Sunday, on tenterhooks, listening to a mostly instrumental version playing on the opening credits.

Objectively, I wouldn’t score this highly – it’s undeniably catchy but I don’t much like Bega’s voice and repeated listens would be hellish I suspect – but the Proustian rush of what I associate it with, the moments before the game sold itself out to Murdoch and the team were young, fresh and exciting, means there is fondness there. I’d maybe even give it 6 purely on those grounds. I can’t imagine this would be the case if I was associating it with holiday season office parties, mind.

I don’t really mind this. Sure, it’s a terrible idea – take Perez Prado, jack it up with cheap “DJ” samples and piledrive it into party mode – but I can’t help admire its execution. Everything seems to slot nicely into place, the sample is allowed to breathe a little, and the extra melody is undeniably catchy. Even Lou Bega has his charms, and sounds like he’s enjoying himself without pushing into forced jolity. It’s still not something I’d choose to listen to, but it’s no worse than Livin’ La Vida Loca to my ears.

If anyone has a minute to spare check out Lou’s follow-up single “I’ve Got A Girl” – it’s essentially the exact same song, but with a list of locations where he has girls rather than a list of the girls themselves.

Yeah I struggle to dislike this. It was overplayed at the time, but there’s something essentially good natured about it. The lyrics aren’t exactly elevated, but they scan as harmlessly cheeky rather than lascivious.

And yes, ‘I Got A Girl’ was hilarious. Definitely from the ‘Old Pop In An Oak’ school of shamelessly identical follow-ups.

One could talk about the mambo influences but ultimately this is a novelty record. It still gets a blast in nightclubs today which is more than most of 1999’s chart toppers.

A couple of notes. In one of the strange chart battles typical of the era this went head to head for the top spot with another (slightly better) mambo inspired record, Sway by Shaft. Number two for his second week was The Launch by DJ Jean, the second 1999 runner up I can’t remember at all.

Prior to entering at number one this song spent three weeks inching its way up the top forty (40-33-31) as an import, something that a few chart toppers including the bunny but one would do over the next couple of years.

And finally I can’t hear this song without being reminded of a cover version where the song is performed by `Bill Clinton` – I think you can still find it in on youtube.

I agree with what #1 said. This song is all about Channel Four Cricket and – most specifically – the 2005 Ashes series.

A little bit of bowling the Aussies out by tea, a little bit of KP’s 158 at the Oval, a little bit of ‘Jones! Bowden! Kasprowicz the man to go’, a little bit of ‘Yeaaahhhh nice one Shane’

For that, it gets a six.

Did the Channel 4 use of it feature any of the singing beyound that “heeuerrgh” at the end? If not, that would explain why I also have fond memories of it soundtracking cricket, but can’t abide it when it forms part of the “latin section” (along with Vida Loca and La Bamba) at any wedding or office party I go to.

This got to #3 in the US despite the fact I don’t think a commercial single was released – at least this would explain how Lou Bega also got to #3 on the US album chart. A truly ridiculous single – I wondered if it was the result of a bet between record company executives that they could get mambo into the pop charts. That being said I can’t deny it’s catchy and agree with others it’s ok in small doses: 6/10.

BTW, anyone else think it’s weird how he shouts “Mambo No.5” in random places in the song? Guess you gotta get the song title in the lyrics somehow.

There was a retooled version for Disney characters, wasn’t there? Also by Lou Bega, I feel sure.

Ten year old me made up my own version of this called ‘Mambo Number 1’ in the playground, where I replaced all the names with nursery rhyme characters. It raised some minor chuckles.

#12 Mucho Mambo isn’t anywhere near as good as this. It’s a one-idea dirge that I’m not sure is even actually mambo.

Re 13: Yes, Lou’s throwing in “Mambo number 5!” and “trumpet!” every so often are the only bits that really grate with me. But then I don’t think I’ve ever heard it a party or wedding or works do.

It is very easy to adapt to other non-Benny Hill type lists, which means it gets stuck in my head A LOT, me being a listy kind of person.

I didn’t like Mucho Mambo at all, though, maybe because Dean Martin’s original (another no.2) was so good, and because it was (poorly) structured as a dance record rather than the ruthless chorus-chorus-chorus of Bega’s mambo.

I didn’t think I remembered The Launch, until I just checked youtube. OK, but it’s no Alice Deejay. It also sounds like she’s saying “get ready for the lunch”.

ha! It’s avoiding long on and just clearing the ropes

Just terrible, painful to listen to but virtually inebriated on it’s own massive confidence at becoming a smash. The video peddles a particular brand of sexism, the ‘what’s-the-matter-don’t-ladies-like-being-pretty?’ brand. Lou Bega himself reminds me of some drossy social club entertainer – This is the soundtrack to a David Brent executive shower.

Re #10 – Erithian and I have become good buddies outside of this place and he texed me to mention he would be commenting on this record and why. Reading through his very happy little entry, I couldn’t help noticing the bit about his lads “putting down their tablets”. This expression would completely ruin the Chocs’ lovely “Put You Together Again”, as using modern technology to contact Errol would be much quicker than writing to him.

On a far more sombre note, it has already been mentioned that this track was used to introduce Test cricket and specifically the Ashes. Tragically we wake up this morning to the news that Australian batsman Phil Hughes has died as a result of being struck on the head during a domestic match at the SCG. The young man was only 25 and would almost certainly have toured England next summer. An utterly horrid thing to happen and the lad who bowled the ball is in pieces. Truly awful.

The Royle Family was one of the greatest of all situation comedies in that it presupposed a situation for its characters and let the comedy arise from it unforced; relieved of the need to placate a laughing track regularly, some of its most wondrous moments come from simple close study of faces, reactions, expressions, asides, and the unshatterable love between its characters despite the innate absurdity of their situation. In one of its most celebrated sequences Ricky Tomlinson and Geoffrey Hughes are redecorating the family living room in preparation for baby David’s christening. As they prepare to strip the wallpaper “Mambo No 5” comes on the radio, and to Tomlinson’s excited roar of “Array! It’s that Mambos Number Five!” they engage in an elegantly dainty dance routine, tearing down the paper in time to the song, breaking down the fourth wall and engaging in a Laurel and Hardy soft shoe shuffle to camera; Sue Johnston’s wife/mother/grandmother figure, in the kitchen, smiles benevolently, taps her toes and sways her hips gently to the good-hearted party tune.

For this reason I am averse to being unduly critical of 1999’s great Euro package holiday/Club 18-30 homecoming hit, since Lou Bega’s systematic, grinning list of female conquests (or ideals) is only a feather’s breath away from the similar and equally questionable list which concludes Kid Creole’s “(I’m A) Wonderful Thing (Baby)” (“I thought you were talking about the ‘A’s!”). Perez Prado had, thanks to a Guinness ad campaign featuring what looked startlingly like the epileptic ghost of Ian Curtis, made number two in 1995 – six years after his passing – with “Guaglione,” and his “Mambo No 5” was subsequently cut up and reshaped for German singer David Lubega to brag with knowing innocuousness about his apparent irresistibility, combined with a sneaky jibe at contemporary mores (“The boys say they want some gin and juice/But I really don’t wanna” – a sideways swipe at Snoop). Post-war Cuban brass play table tennis – or PacMan – with Basement Jaxx-type electro swarms to form a record which, though hardly a masterpiece, is far from dislikable and certainly several thousand strata up the evolutionary chain from Jive Bunny. The other memory I have of the song is Bruce Forsyth performing it at the 2000 Royal Variety Performance, leading a dance troupe of grinning pensioners. Bless him. The trumpets! Oi’ll give it foive

“Curmudgeons like me could wait a bit longer until someone found a better use for the song’s undeniable bonhomie.”

Well, I love where this is going. 🙂

The “mock-Latin Benny Hill” element grates on me – how much, I’m not sure, but I suspect that it was a fairly hefty part of why this was a holiday hit.

Of course, what made it the biggest global smash of the second half of 1999 was how Perez Prado sampling plus turn-of-the-millennium dance-pop production combined to create something that couldn’t not cut through the airwaves. Still can, and no wonder it got used (very effectively) for cricket coverage. And it’s not the most offensive number 1 to be used for that; a little bit of name-dropping casual sexism is barely a patch on the winking racism of “Dreadlock Holiday,” let’s be honest.

(On which note, #28; apparently – I haven’t seen the delivery, nor do I intend to – Hughes was playing a hook shot, and the ball hit him on the neck as it missed the bat. I suspect the immediate impact will be that batsmen will be far less inclined to play such shots at bouncers – which, ironically, will mean we’ll see more of them as they will become more effective, particularly in one-day cricket.)

Think I’ll give this a 6. The bunnied cover removes both the best and the worst parts of the song, and it’ll be interesting to see how everyone reacts once Tom gets there – especially as he’s foreshadowing that he’ll mark the cover higher…

The Tom Ewing seal of non-approval has just pushed this over the million sales mark.

Can confirm this was massive in Germany. Like Livin’ La Vida Loca, it was a hit over there first; I was based in Munich for the first half of 1999 and lived through both said smashes twice over when they topped the UK charts once I was back in the UK. With Ricky, I didn’t mind at all. As for Lou… sadly, once would’ve been more than enough.

David Lubega ‘Lou Bega’ Balemezi did pretty well out of his 5 minutes of fame. It’s just a really catchy song, and one that I refuse to dislike. And, weirdly enough, I actually seem to like it more than most.

Though the fact my favourite version mashes it up with Megalovania from the video game Undertale probably says something about me and my tastes.