LAS KETCHUP – "Asereje (The Ketchup Song)"

So, where did that “boogie and the biggide bee” come from? This always sounded like the “Rappers Delight” was nicking it from here, obviously that’s not possible.

I suspect it comes from somewhere much older, but .. where?

Cultural appropriation and nowhere near as catchy as when the Rolling Stones did it. 2 out of 10.

Sheila B played it last week in Sophisticated Boom Boom on WFMU: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/86869. Not a context where you’re particularly likely to hear it – and it took a while before I realized why it sounded so familiar – but it didn’t really stuck out as much as a sore thumb as you might perhaps expect.

That’s interesting – I don’t think I’ve heard ‘Agadoo’ in about thirty years.

There’s a lot of things that do it for me with Asereje – the cooing production (which but for My Sweet Lord is maybe the most atypical in a 2002 number one), the almost random flickering between Spanish and English, their effortlessly cool singing voices and in particular their scansion – the way they sail through the bridge in particular (and as with previous no 1s Dr Jones and Boom Boom Boom Boom I find that very pretty bridge to be its highlight). Despite its holiday disco associations, it wasn’t and doesn’t sound like a summer hit, and as with Saturday Night before it the special ‘dance’ that goes with it is purely incidental to what comes across as a rather unassuming (and endearingly so) record.

I was about 14 when I found out ‘Asereje’ was what they were actually singing instead of ‘I said a-hey, a-hey’, despite having the title written out right there for me all that time.

7 or 8, probably 7.

I’m not sure I remember this or not, which I think may be what makes it so less irritating than previous holiday hits. The ‘lyrics’ function as percussive accents rather than demanding comprehension. It’s undemanding fun and a relief from pleading/bleeding ballads.

I can’t help but feel a tad nostalgic about this one. For me ‘The Ketchup Song’ marked one last hurrah for the imported novelty holiday hit complete with drunk proof dance craze that spread like wildfire when granted a full UK release as summer gave way to autumn.

The advancement of global release dates was in its primitive stages by the following year, thus slowly denecessitating the need for anyone to invest in such tracks via expensive import copies a whole month before. We were the last country to crown it as a chart topper as I recall, and I think the original release date might have even coincided with Will and Gareth’s two weeks prior. Compare this to how relatively quickly we got a 2012 bunny, that also became a viral novelty hit with a notorious dance craze, and the difference in speed is huge.

Musically there’s motifs that hark back to the best bits of these brief but brightly burning hits: the nonsensical Spanglish of ‘Macarena’ here, the frenetic building in the bridge evoking the bombastic hysteria of ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ there, likewise how the surf guitar segues into the chorus (and it was by no means the last 2002 bunny to utilise that). It’s demented, but in the best possible way, and definitely one of the most well put together novelty holiday hits I’ve heard.

Its video also does the genius if unintended thing of looking perilously close to a music video parody from the Channel 4 sketch show ‘Smack the Pony’ – specifically one from their 2000 series that was a mickey take of Ricky Martin/Geri Halliwell titled ‘Mucho Latino (Mi Pico Chorizo)’. It certainly did well enough to be the 8th biggest seller of the year, and to still be inside the top 10 for Christmas and the first week of 2003. A follow up single, ‘Kusha La Payas’, was scheduled for release the following March, but was ultimately cancelled, and the last they were heard of was, as JLucas at #3 pointed out, at Eurovision 2006.

That said, I can’t give this anything more than a 7, for the simple fact its success prevents us discussing the third and best single in the triumvirate of #2 hits from S Club Juniors, namely the wistful, Bollywood string laden, Kylie-esque “New Direction”. Also penned by Cathy Dennis, to my ears this was the single that, were its performers not looked so unfavourably upon for having an average age of 12, would be considered a classic now. Certainly it’s what I felt the senior S Club should’ve returned with for their first single as a sextet a month later instead of the average ‘Don’t Stop Movin” retread that was ‘Alive’.

Re 15: There’s a definite minor key melancholy to The Ketchup Song. The chorus has a beautiful, unexpected uplift, and a daftness in its scat lyric (more Louis Jordan than Sugarhill Gang – or maybe Scatman John if you’re looking for a more recent forebear), as well as genuinely odd chord shifts and structure that nobody would have come up with if they were aiming for a LCD holiday smash.

As it’s of Spanish origin, I don’t really want to think of it as cynical. I’m really quite fond of The Ketchup Song; I don’t remember it from the time, but heard it around 10 years ago when I was listening to all the ’00s No.1s as a private project. I can see a lineage with Wembley-born Spanish singer Jeanette (who has just been compiled by the aforementioned Sheila B) – outward-looking, playful, non-serious Spanish pop which has a Latin feel but isn’t designed for an authenticity test. There is always the very non-melancholic Ricky Martin and his “skin is a colour mocha” as a better Popular example of decidedly cynical, but horribly catchy, Spanglish.

#17 What do you mean by ‘The End of The End of History?’ Was that when (SHOCK HORROR!) DJ Ötzi was at the top?

Anyway, this song isn’t fun at all. I don’t know why, but Spanglish doesn’t really work. Four.

I recently went to a child’s birthday party, hosted by his 96-year-old grandmother’s carer, in her house, and they played a CD of children’s classics including Agadoo, Jake The Peg and The Laughing Policeman. The 5-year-olds had no interest in it whatsoever.

From my own experience as a dad, young kids will easily enjoy classic children’s songs (as well as old pop and classical novelties) if they hear them a few times at home, in the car etc and especially if you sing along and draw their attention to the funny words, sound effects etc. My four-year-old loves things like “Robin Hood” (the Dick James song), “Witch Doctor”, “Ragtime Cowboy Joe”, “Octopus’s Garden” and “Right Said Fred” (the Bernard Cribbins hit, not the band). It’s a great introduction to the world of music and song.

It’s weird to see everyone talking about this as a forgotten novelty. I’m Brazilian and here this was HUGE and still is in some ways. I think by then Brazilian pop took quite a while to catch up to what was happening overseas, so bubblegum, Britney-style electropop, Ricky Martin latin flavour and the reality show boom were all happening at the same time. Our version of Asereje was actually called Ragatanga, and it was recorded by a girl group called Rouge, which was formed in the Brazilian version of Popstars, and though most of the world had moved on their main reference point was still the Spice Girls. They released a mix of original songs and portuguese versions of whatever the label had, mostly stuff I’ve never heard of but with some truly weird choices, from Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn to B*Witched’s C’est La Vie. Ragatanga was their first and biggest hit. It doesn’t change much of the original version, even keeping a chorus from Las Ketchup like they’re some weird kind of uncredited guests, although they do have a better vocal range and I think the arrengement is a little better. The biggest difference is they added some steps to the dance, mixing it up a bit with the Macarena, so you have some more to do at the start of the chorus.

Maybe Brazil was an ideal spot for this to blow up, because the spanish influences are foreign enough to have that little “exotic” flair but the language is still familiar enough that the translation doesn’t sound strange and the spanish nonsense in the chorus could just as well be portuguese nonsense. Most importantly I think the heart of the song still works. I don’t think the chorus is just a nonsense version of Rapper’s Delight, it’s also english as understood by someone who doesn’t speak it. It’s instantly familiar to the way I remember hearing “Who let the dogs out” as “Eee-levitosa” as a child. It speaks to a particular way of engaging with pop that you lose when you learn the songs language, when you don’t really have to care about what the lyrics mean, and that is a much rarer feeling to people who know english. The Ketchup Song is particularly Latin about it too, basically telling a story about a guy named Diego who dances to a Salsa mix of Rapper’s Delight without caring about the words, engaging with english pop on his own terms.

I’d give it an 8. It’s a classic!

#23 – aaah yes, I know the one you mean re: 2004 bunny. I was actually incorrect myself because where imported holiday hits are concerned there was an unbunnied one from Moldovan trio O-Zone that same year, ‘Dragostea Din Tei’ (or ‘Mi Ya Hiii’ as its more commonly known) which made #3 in June as opposed to September/October, and stayed in the top 10 for quite a while all whilst being point blank ignored by both TOTP and CD:UK on a weekly basis. Although it does prove my point that by that stage in the game, we were getting such hits – however fewer there were – at roughly the same time the rest of Europe did.

This one’s new to me and, honestly, it sounds to me like a hit from today’s very Latin-inflected charts, i.e., that it would hit today not as a novelty record but as the n-th follow-up to ‘Despacito’. Some tasty chords and changes & non-obvious harmonies combine with craftily added rhythmic elements to always be interesting (e.g., creating ingenious virtual tempo changes), compensating for the nonce-syllables insofar as they are a problem (depends on my mood). I’m surprised by how much I like this:
7

I got to “Aserejé” a little while back on my Popular-inspired Hot Latin #1s blog — http://bilboslaptop.blogspot.com/2017/12/las-ketchup-asereje.html — where I tried to place it in a (possibly spurious) tradition of Spanish girl-group novelty hits, of which it was one of the few to actually escape the borders of Spain.

Tom’s diagnosis that it was purpose-built for that task is perhaps accurate, but there’s plenty of stuff on its level that never achieved that kind of escape velocity. Producer Ruiz’s biggest hit before it, for example, was Pastora Soler’s “Dámelo Ya,” a kitschy flamenco/reggae/arabesque hybrid which sounds like a watered-down version of a bunnied Colombian but did massive numbers in Spain (and apparently hit #1 in Turkey).

4/10.

Poor man’s Hinds.

Though TBF Hinds have never transformed even the most terrible, 50p meat and potato pasty into a work of culinary genius.

Welcome back, Tom! I do love the bursts of productivity this blog seems to have during heatwaves. And, er, dubious shifts in political power….

As an American, I’ve never heard this song before. 5 seems a bit right – it’s an enjoyable enough groove. I don’t have the knowledge to connect it to other actual Spanish-language pop, but the combination of the beat and the surfy guitar reminds me a little of what Emma Bunton would soon be doing with her Free Me album.

A mildly irritating 3/10 would be my score.