Music & Films for
Common People
100 Best Mexican Contemporary songs
40
(Rock, 2003)
Molotov
Hit Me
There are two bands called Molotov. The first one is a serious rock band compromised with a political discourse that pens anthems that express how unhappy is Mexican society with the government; the second one is a bunch of guys who make music with prepubescent jokes about sex, and constantly show their misogyny and homophobia. The paradox is that this two bands share the same members and release albums together, so in their third LP they have the powerful Hit Me living next to a track that compares women to food. But if we make an attempt to pretend that the tasteless part of their repertoir doesn't exist, and focus on Hit Me, we find powerful statements that signal the rotten political system in Mexico. It opens saying "When I was a child I wanted to be like Superman, but now I only want to be a congressman", leading to verses that showcase the impunity of Mexican politicians to steal and change laws to benefit them. Then it hits other infamous figures: police officers, bureaucracy and even the public transport. Molotov, as a band, shows the double standards of Mexican society: very good at pointing what's wrong outside, but unable to make a self-introspection to see how each one contributes to that poor state of the country.
39
Rey Pila
No Longer Fun
After the sudden disappearance of indie cult band Los Dynamite, Diego Solórzano took a few years to plan his comeback to the music, and he didn't disappoint when he brought a lot of new wave influences to his new project, Rey Pila. No Longer Fun is the brightest side of Solórzano and his attempt to create a pop hit, starting with a suggestive baseline that sets the tone for what's to come, Rey Pila mixes synths and guitar to bounce forward and backwards in a track that captures the hipster irony: a very well thought track that aims to be cool by appearing to be something casual, almost improvised at the last minute. If in other tracks they went straight to the energetic dark post-punk of The Strokes or Franz Ferdinand, here they decide to chill down to the french bonheur of Phoenix, playing at being the clever boys in the room with lyrics that state that "All the people that we used to know look like they've been on the wall with themselves, with their friends", it's the metacritcism of hipsterism by creating a track that hipsters will adore and will slowly dance to while shoegazing. Rey Pila claims that "it's no longer fun" but the track itself contradicts them.
(Indie Rock, 2010)
38
Belanova
Tus Ojos
In the last years of the 90's, the Mexican club scene saw a boom of local DJs that infused techno music with latin beats, and names like Nopal Beat and Martin Parra started crafting a sound that was further developed by Guadalajara band Sussie 4, all of this evolved to a movement called Acid Cabaret that, if not trascendental in itself, it influenced directly the development of Mexican synthpop. Denisse Guerrero was one of the guest voices in Sussie 4's debut album, and when she launched her own band, Belanova, the influence of this latin techno was very clear. Tus Ojos (Your Eyes) is a mix of acid electronic and sweet pop, the missing link between underground club culture and mass radio success. The shiny samplers that left brief silences to be an important part of the track, and the peculiar acute voice of Denisse give depth to the beat, making this chill track the perfect soundtrack for an evening pool party sipping margaritas. The lyrics are quite straight-forward, but are acceptable enough for a track whose pretensions are just to create an intimate moment for a couple dance.
(Synthpop, 2003)
37
Exploded View
Orlando
After the dissolution of the bands of each one, Martin Thulin, Hugo Quezada and Amon Melgarejo found themselves as the support band for the shows in Mexico of German artist Anika. The fourth of them made an instant click and started experimenting together, resulting in one of the most exciting productions made in Mexico in the recent years. Orlando is pure out-of-the-box-thinking, it creates a gothic atmosphere mixing a new wave rhythm, very heavy on the drums, with synths that sound to something between tingling crystals and nails scratching a chalkboard, but it's Anika's flattened voice what makes it spectral: as a ghost trapped in Earth looking back at her life and pondering if "it was worthy". It's eerie in all of its components, something that is almost out of touch with tangible world, scales that ascend and descend as if they were spirits floating in the air, it grabs your attention and summons you to its melancholic painful vibe, but this suffering is cathartic in a way, it allows us to take some time to inspect our own life balance, to question if we were already in the afterlife we would see what we are doing right now as worthy.
(Indie Rock, 2016)
36
Zoé
Love
An infinite number of songs have been composed about love, perhaps no other word appears more in song titles than this one, and even by itself, from John Lennon and Nat King Cole to Lana del Rey and Kendrick Lamar, a lot of musicians have named their songs to honor this feeling. But in Zoé's approach to it, they sing in Spanish and still use that English word to name it, appealing to the universality that the word has. In their very particular cosmic narrative, León Lárregui takes the character of a space traveler who gets stuck in a planet after his starship breaks, of course all of this being an analogy of how it feels to fall in love, discovering another individual as if it was a magic new planet that has three suns, transparent mountains and light anemones. The melody is pretty conventional, but the play between an acoustic and an electric guitar with the added synths to create futuristic effects make it accessible and appealing for everybody, reminding us of The Beatles' All You Need is Love hippie era, a song that is able to gather a lot of people together to celebrate all the good things that can happen in the world when love reigns.
(Rock, 2003)
35
Lila Downs
Feat. Celso Piña and Totó La Momposina
Zapata Se Queda
Born to an Indigenous Mixteca mother and a Scottish-American father, Lila Downs has represented an adventurous contemporary attitude towards traditional folk Mexican songs, her mixed heritage is very well represented in her sound, full of nuances that display the great diversity in Mexican music. Even if she is mostly known by her modern versions of some classic folk recordings, she has also penned her own compositions that talk about Mexico and its traditions. In Zapata se Queda, she honors Emiliano Zapata, a leader of Mexican Revolution who fought for the rights of farmers and indigenous people, but she also makes some references to the singular faith of Mexico that is a mix of traditional catholicism and mystic pagan beliefs. There are wide eclectic roots from this song: cumbia, ska, charanga, son, rock... and she teams with the Colombian folk singer Totó la Momposina and the Mexican accordionist Celso Piña to add more styles to it. In the end, Zapata se Queda is a great example of Mexican culture: maximalist and a pastiche of several styles, references and ideas, but also very festive and full of soul.
(Folk, 2011)
34
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete
Sealed Scene
There's something special in married couples that decide to make music together, from Sonic Youth and The White Stripes to Arcade Fire and The Plastic Ono Band, the connection between two persons who base their relationship in their mutual love for music has given us lots of real treats. In the case of Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González, they have developed such a complex and rich sound that it's difficult to believe that it's a band that consists of only two people. Sealed Scene is fine psychedelic shoegaze that is disruptive and challenging right from the start, with a distorted guitar riff that sounds almost like an emergency siren announcing the opening of hell's gates. Quintanilla in the guitar and lead voice, and González in the drums are able to craft and expansive sound that drowns the listeners in dark atmospheres and spiky textures. It's a rapturous love dialogue between two musicians that are in total control of their dirty performances, they add, and blend, and twist layers of sounds to create a trip that is hypnotic in its structured chaos. If the end of marriage is creating beautiful things together, Quintanilla and González are acing it.
(Indie Rock, 2014)
33
(Rock, 2001)
Zurdok
Estático
Zurdok was the band that, at the end of the 90s, finally managed to decentralize rock music by proving that it was feasible to have a successful career outside of Mexico City and by putting the reflectors in the growing musical scene in Monterrey, their home city, helping to create the movement "Avanzada Regia" that was very important in the millennium transition. They crafted three amazing albums with a personal style, but very different between them, and their last one, Maquillaje, saw them leaving behind the dark experimentations in favor of a more sophisticated sound, almost orchestral rock-pop. In Estático (Static), the bass and the drums play together, accentuating the same moments to create a slow and steady rhythm that almost resembles country music, but they add a dissonant guitar and synth effects to create contrast while Gerardo "Chetes" Garza sings about existential diatribes and states that "I always find myself circling very fast, bun actually I'm staying static". But the best moment arrives at the very end of the track when the instruments give us frenzy variations of what they played previously. After this album they decided to call it quits, and it probably was a wise decision, because they managed to keep the status of "cult band" with a perfect discography.
32
Ely Guerra
Quiéreme Mucho
If we analyze songs that are about desire, we'll see that there are very few that are genuinely about that personal experience of enjoying. Between Mexican female musicians/singers, desire has been used either as a weapon to establish autonomy (from Ultrasónicas to Gloria Trevi) or as a weapon to provoke and seduce (from Alejandra Guzmán to Paulina Rubio), and even if those are very valid reasons, Quiéreme Mucho by Ely Guerra shows that there's another way to write about female desire, that very personal experience of fulfilling our needs to get pleasure. In this track, Ely states that she wants to feel pretty, to dance, to sing, to watch the sunrise, and of course she also wants a passionate encounter, because, she sums it up "I want to feel good". It's a perfect rock ballad with suggestive guitar riffs and soft jazz touches that create an intimate atmosphere, but overall, the work is made in the vocals; Guerra is in total control of her powerful voice and with very subtle intonations she displays a wide range of how pleasure can be felt, we get goosebumps when she says "I want to dance, I want to feel your bo-o-ody".
(Rock, 2004)
31
Nortec Collective
Tengo La Voz
The Nortec Collective was formed by a group of seven musicians/DJs that felt the need to step up the game of Mexican folk music. By mixing the typical Norteño bands music from their home town, Tijuana, with avant-garde electronic, they created the most interesting fusion that has came from the north of the country. If their first LP was more a "what if we mix this and this", by 2005, The Tijuana Sessions Vol. 3 (that is actually only their second album) saw them developing the Nortec sound into something much more sophisticated and viable to a proper style rather than just experimentation. Tengo la Voz has the clear basic premise of norteño meets electronic, but they take it a step further by putting the emphasis on the trumpet, giving clear nods to the fine jazz of Miles Davies or Duke Ellington; but the bouncy bassline and the fun orchestration are also a heavy reminder of polka and balkan music (the genres that once arrived to Mexican land evolved into norteño). It's a playful mix that could very well be the circus band orchestrating a postmodern Fellini or Kusturica film set in the Mexico-US frontier.