100 Best Mexican Contemporary Songs (10-1)

100 Best Mexican Contemporary songs

10

(Folk, 2001)

Celso Piña Y Su Ronda Bogotá
Feat. Pato Machete And Blanquito Man

Cumbia Sobre El Río

Cumbia might be the one rhythm that unites and divides Latin America at the same time. Talking of cumbia is talking about the mixed heritage that marked the Latin ethnics since it combines the flutes and the maracas of the original indigenous communities, the couplets and singing of the white Europeans that conquered them, and the drums and dancing of the black African slaves that were brought to work on the fields. But as this music spread from Colombia to the rest of the region, it went acquiring local characteristic that went differentiating the cumbia from one country to the next one. In Mexico, cumbia got influenced by norteño bands and their use of brass instruments and accordions, but Celso Piña took it one step further by mixing all this already colorful collage with the sonidero beats, the street DJs that mixed tropical sounds and added their own freestyle to animate popular parties. On top of that, Cumbia Sobre el Río features Pato Machete (from Control Machete) and Blanquito Man (from King Changó), noticeable urban musicians to freestyle in a mix of rap, reggae and cumbia. The guaracha beat as a base contrast with the accordion each at their own cadence, creating a dysonant tempo that is pure out of the box thinking. If the original cumbia was the racial mix of Latin America, Cumbia Sobre el Río is the socio-cultural mix of the contemporary Mexico.

9

(Pop, 2005)

Belanova

Por Ti

Opposed to the anglo world where synthpop acts managed to set a healthy distance from commercial pop, in Latin America those borders were very blurry, and as soon as they managed to get some success, they forgot about proposition and targeted formulas instead. It happened in México (Moenia), in Spain (Mónica Naranjo), and in Argentina (Miranda!). Belanova was no exception, but for a brief period, it was the band that showed that it was possible to create straightforward sweetened pop that was crafted and not manufactured. Por Ti (For You) screams pop in every single detail: the simple structure, the shiny synths, the pixy voice of Denisse Guerrero, the lyrics on teen love declaration. But the hooks are elaborated in enveloping layers that create fantasy candy atmospheres that twist and attract to their catchiness and that paint with bubble-gum colors showing that the palette of pop sounds could be as broad as the imagination. It is pop in its Warholian expression, if Por Ti were to be visually represented, it would have to be a Agatha Ruiz de la Prada design: flashy and playful on the exterior, but complicated and meaningful in its formulation. There's no much in the lyrics, but when the base rhythm takes a pause and Denisse screams "If there's something that I can assure you it is that I imagined my life with you", it feels endless, a declaration of love that is so true that doesn't need superfluous words or rhetoric figures to be expressed.

8

(Rock, 2003)

Ojos Claros, Labios Rosas

Ely Guerra

Just that magic riff that opens the track was enough to captivate anyone who gave an ear to the most famous track of this Mexican rock diva. Ely Guerra shows how powerful are her guitar skills by giving us something that The Strokes could have wished for themselves, and seeing a woman dominating a guitar with such a dirty sounds immediately references us to the great Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. But to make things more interesting, she doesn't go for an aggressive vocal performance that matches the strength of that riff, and instead goes for sultry and suggestive while confessing that "I suddenly felt his skin and his breath" to charge the air with the electricity of sexual arousal. But the key in this track is when the chorus breaks the stablished energy and goes to pop territory with sweet uh-uh's and a much more rhythmic beat while she asks, almost playing an innocent Lolita, "Let me do things to you". She alternates between those two states of seduction, disrupting with that amazing riff when she has fooled us into her sensual games just to prove that she is the one that is in charge of the whole situation. The tracks escalates and it is by the end that she explodes (almost in an orgasmic way) repeating that "I only hope that with time I won't regret this". Such an art-rock track is so ahead of her time that we can see it fitting perfectly in St. Vincent's acclaimed self.titled album released 11 years after this jewel.

7

(Electronic, 2002)

Kinky

Soun Tha Mi Primer Amor

Having every instrument playing at a different genre sounds like the key for disaster, but the way Kinky manages to do it in their first single surely granted them a place in the canon of contemporary latin alternative bands. In Sount Tha Mi Primer Amor, the drums are pure latin percussion, almost reaching a samba point, the trumpets are representative of the norteño bands that are native their home town, Monterrey, the bass is a bouncy cumbia, the guitar is full rock power and the synths are festive euro-style house. But this pastiche of styles nurtures a track that can take music to new levels by mixing the best of different genres and cultures and that is able to represent a multi-cultural population with mixed and changing identities. The result is a playful, funky and sexy song that also benefits from the clever and seductive lyrics that are whispered by Gil Cerezo and makes you blush when he suggests the "verses and kisses made with my trumpet-shaped mouth that plays and plays a note in your lower lip". But beyond the cleverness of the track, the true goal for Kinky is having as many people as they can filling the dancefloor and moving their hips and booty to the festive beats that they perform, and with the latin heat that emanates from this track, we would be very surprised if it won't inspire an instant sweaty party.

6

(Indie Folk, 2015)

Natalia Lafourcade

Hasta La Raíz

Natalia Lafourcade followed an opposite career path to other latin female singer-songwriters; while Julieta Venegas and Shakira started as underground rock musicians and moved to anodyne mainstream pop when gained mass success, Natalia break through with good radio hits in a twee style that was somewhere between Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado, she was different to most popstars, but we really can say that she had much substance back then. In any case, she decided to sacrifice topping the charts for a hard search of her own sound, and it took her five albums to reach a point where she sounded mature, focused and meaningful. Hasta la Raíz, that translate as To The Root, couldn't had a better name since it takes classic latin genres like bolero and huapango as a base for a song that celebrates the traditions and the identity of Mexico in the form of a traditional romantic serenade but with more contemporary arrangements. Her songwriting is at the front of the track, with verses that evoke the deep Mexico by taking us in a journey through rivers, jungles, beaches, mountains and cane fields, while the sacred smoke of the ancestors cover us. It could be very well a song for a lover that will always love within us, but it is also a love song for the beautiful land, traditions and identity that she carries as a Mexican.

5

(Rock, 2000)

Café Tacvba

Aviéntame

The Mexican film industry experienced a revolution after the release of the first film by (now two times Oscar winner for Best Director) Alejandro González Iñárritu. The film came with an amazing soundtrack that included a few tracks inspired by the film from several prominent latin bands. Café Tacvba, that by 2000 was already the most important band in Mexican rock, imprinted their contribution to that soundtrack with melancholy and bitterness, reflecting the film's idea of love as a cruel beast that awakens the most basic instincts of a human being. With two acoustic guitars and a violin as the only instrumentation that set the sadness as the core feeling, Emmanuel "Meme" del Real starts demanding his lover to "hug me and bite me", and all along the track he contrapositions tender and violent images of love making "whisper to me and bark at me", he embraces the polarity of passion, it makes you feel good, but it can also hurt, and at times does both at the same time. It is a lament for a person that is, inevitably, about to leave us, so by demanding to be hurt physically, one tries to hide how much more painful is that idea of being left. His last demand is "Just watch how I stay here waiting for you to be gone", because all the passion and rage that this song contains is an attempt to make a subtle plead "perhaps you'll come back for me", because when we have given our heart, we are willing to be devoured once and again by that same dog,

4

(Folk, 2000)

Juan Gabriel

Abrázame Muy Fuerte

Juan Gabriel's death in 2016 was a major event that shook the whole Mexican society and that brought huge discussions on the legacy of this folk superstar and finished with a major journalist sacked due to his classist criticism to The Divo from Juárez. In any case, Juan Gabriel might be very well the latin equivalent of Elton John, a queer charismatic and flamboyant man with the ability to write the most powerful love verses in a successful career that lasted more than 40 years. His last colossal composition might be Abrázame Muy Fuerte (Hug Me Very Tight), a track that approaches the most classic Romanticism, where love is something tragic and grandiloquent. The lyrics are very straightforward telling "Hug me very tight because time passes and he never forgives", but Juan Gabriel imprints his signature dramatic vocal performance to make us feel the true tragedy of inexorable time and eventual death, and combined with the instrumental in-crescendo, they are lapidary and convey an infinite amount of emotion. It is precisely the orchestration the biggest accomplishment of this track, it's Juan Gabriel taking his game to a more portentous level by using the trumpets and violins in a way that feels Olympian to accompany a lament for the only true enemy that we all have: time. We might not be able to do anything against it, but a passionate hug from a loved one can suspend its force and make us feel infinite.

3

(Electronic, 2008)

Nortec Collective

Tijuana Sound Machine

No matter what kind of music you like, as a Mexican, norteño music always finds a way to be present in your life, from soundtracking public transport to being mandatory in every wedding, it's just imprinted in our collective cultural experience. And certainly we can imagine Ramón Amezcua and Pepe Mogt as teenagers listening to Kraftwerk in their rooms, while downstairs, Los Tigres del Norte or any other norteño band was playing loud for the rest of the family. Years later, by mixing those very different styles, they managed to finally bring something new to a music genre that failed to evolve in important ways since it was created after the polkas in the beginning of the 20th century. Tijuana Sound Machine is a celebration of Mexican pop culture, is a car that travels around the frontier city of Tijuana pounding music through the amplified speakers, an image that is common in rural Mexico with the Sonideros. The prominent accordion is transformed into a rhythmic tool, and a vocoder voice, mostly whispering inaudible things apart from the title of the track, introduce us to this block party that has robotic cold lights, but also the warmth of Mexican spirit. The trumpets enhance the celebratory experience and give another evolution to the track, and at one point is as if accordion and trumpets were challenging each other to a dance competition. It's the post-modern hybrid that defines the Nortec sound as something more than an eventual experimentation, and states that norteño techno has endless possibilities to keep evolving and reshape the cultural identity of a country's folk music.

2

(Synthpop, 2015)

Neon Indian

Annie

How can we blame people with a fixation on the 80s? I mean, they had The Smiths and New Order, while we have... ehm... Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift. If you agree, that's because your brain played a nice trick on you that made you forget that the 80s also had Milli Vanilli and New Kids on the Block, it's that test of time that make us believe that indeed all past time was much better. Alan Palomo was born on 1988, so pretty much he doesn't have any real memories of what living in the 80s was like, so his idea of that decade is no more than an idealization of how great was the past that he didn't got to live. But by synthesizing all the best references from that time, Neon Indian created the meta-80's track: one that fusions the fake-tropical beat of Madonna's La Isla Bonita, the sleek synths of Scritti Politti, and the seductive attitude of Prince, while he gets tormented by the bipping of an answering machine. There's lo-fi production and sound effects that instantly take us in a time travel to the decade of neon colors and big hairstyles; it's a musical equivalent of the Black Mirror's episode "San Junipero", it condenses the quintessential elements of the 80s and erase everything that was superfluous or unnecessary to make look that period of time as the best one that has happened on earth. We don't know if in 30 years people will be fixated with our present trends, but if they do, we hope they can come with something as cool as the psychedelic riffs and hazy synths of Neon Indian.

1

(Indie Rock, 2001)

Zoé

Deja Te Conecto

Right now, they are one of the biggest Latin rock bands, but in 2001, Zoé were young men mocked by the "alternative" radio presenters and that were dropped by their label that decided to don't release their namesake first album. That rejection was caused by how different they sounded to any other Mexican band at the moment, even if it could trace some references to Soda Stereo's regional new-wave and to britpop bands, just like Zurdok and Jumbo did before them, they also relied heavily on more electronic and alternative sounds, influenced by Placebo and Radiohead. Deja te Conecto (Let Me Connect You) opens with robotic futuristic synths and a very soft baseline while León Lárregui whispers "Don't ask me to cry for you, once I saw you subjected", and then the base intensifies, getting their rock music almost to the realm of industrial, creating a cold and spacial atmosphere, almost belonging in a dark sci-fi where people are able to interconnect their minds and their dreams. In terms of popularity, is not as big as other hits of the band like Via Láctea, Love or Nada, but Deja te Conecto is Zoé at their most experimental, playing with sounds and textures in the way Muse or Interpol were doing right at that point of time. In the end, another label trusted in them and released this album (only to be dropped again a few years later), and the rest is history. But we stay with their first official single, because it's their best accomplishment in terms of presenting an alternative to Mexican rock and a real musical difference in the rise of the new Millennium, it's ambitious and complex, the touch of genius that only new and revolutionary bands can offer.