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Mambo No. 5
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Date Aired
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Spetember 16, 2021
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Running Time
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21:32
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Previous Review
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Website
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Todd plays "Mambo No. 5" on the piano.
LOU BEGA - MAMBO NO. 5
A one-hit retrospective
Todd: I can't believe I haven't done this one yet.
Video for "Mambo No. 5"
Todd (VO): Ladies and gentlemen, this is One-Hit Wonderland, where we take a look at bands and artists known only for one song.
Todd: And today, we are once again going to party [footage from ABC Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve] like it's 1999. The last good year.
Montage of music videos for Britney Spears - "...Baby One More Time"; Eminem - "My Name Is"; blink-182 - "All the Small Things"; The Offspring - "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy); Mariah Carey - "Heartbreaker"; and Smash Mouth - "All Star"
Todd (VO): Now, I've talked before about what a towering year 1999 is in pop culture. To me, it's not even really part of the '90s, or even a measurement of time at all. It's more like its own separate genre of music. Not necessarily a good genre, but certainly a distinct one. A genre of street parties, brightly-colored McG videos, and an endless supply of almost obnoxiously happy energy.
Todd: And today, we are gonna look at maybe the most 1999 song ever made.
The song's iconic opening lyric plays
Lou Bega: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo No. 5
A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
Todd: To think, we once lived in a world where "Mambo No. 5" didn't exist.
Todd (VO): Even for the genre free-for-all of the late '90s, this was an odd one out.
Todd: Mambo? Seriously?
Todd (VO): There was no reason to expect a mambo song to get big, but "Mambo No. 5" was simply too much of an earworm to be denied.
Todd: If you have been alive at any point in the past twenty-two years, you probably know this song back to front.
Montage of clips from the video and of live performances of the song
Todd (VO): And you can blame that entirely on the energy of its singer, a mystery man in a fedora named Lou Bega. He danced, he mugged, he sort of quasi-rapped. And somehow, he redefined mambo for a new generation.
Todd: Like, someone just says the word "mambo" and you're not generally going to think of [clip of performance by...] Tito Puente or anyone from the '50s. No, the first notes that pop into your head are [Todd imitates the beginning of the song vocally].
Todd (VO): Not to say that this is a particularly respectful entry into the mambo genre. Some will tell you it's the worst song of all time. But love it or hate it - and for the record, I'm not really fond of this song at all - you couldn't stop it. It was a massive worldwide smash, and it still basically is.
Todd: It has barely faded at all since the '90s, and that deserves some respect.
Todd (VO): So we're gonna do a deep dive on Mr. Bega, the walking anachronism with an alleged string of ladies in his wake.
Todd: [putting on a fedora] So let's put a little bit of Lou Bega in our lives.
Lou Bega: Let me jump in and send in the trumpets
A little bit of-
Before the hit
Todd: Why don't we start way back?
Vintage footage of a man biking in a ruined city, then various scenes from Latin American city life, buildings, and dances
Todd (VO): Okay, in the mid-to-late 1940s, most of the world was basically rubble. One of the few places on Earth not blown to shit during the war was Latin America, and so for a little while there, this whole area was very hot. Brazil, South America, the Caribbean were the source of all the trendiest fashions and styles, and especially music. The Rumba, the Tango, and then the Mambo.
Footage of a man in a tuxedo on stage introducing...
Announcer: Here is the new music of Perez Prado!
Todd (VO): [over clips of Prado performing live] One of the Mambo's biggest practitioners was Perez Prado, a Cuban band leader who moved to Mexico and spread the Mambo all through North America, including [picture of cover art for] one hit in 1950 called "Mambo N. 5."
Todd: As far as I know, there is no Mambo's 1 through 4. There is a Mambo No. 8, though.
Todd (VO): [footage of Elvis Presley performing, before cutting to more footage of Prado] And then a few years later, rock 'n roll happens, ending Mambo and all the other big band genres and closing the book on an entire era of popular music. And that is where that story ends.
Todd: Until we get to that magical period called the mid-'90s.
Clip of Gina G - "(Ooh Ahh) Just a Little Bit", followed by a montage of a man doing the Macarena, the title screen to Clueless, a snippet of Spice Girls -"Wannabe", a scene from Romeo + Juliet, the Teletubbies, another snippet of Aqua - "Barbie Girl", and a clip of Smash Mouth - "Walking on the Sun"
Todd (VO): The Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation is passed, democracy is spreading across the globe, there is absolutely not a goddamn thing in the world to worry about. Or at least, that's how it feels at the time. So suddenly, music gets a lot more colorful and silly and weirdly very retro.
Todd (VO): For our purposes, the most important movement is [clip of Combustible Edison - "Vertigogo"] the lounge revival, which brought back a lot of the popular non-rock genres of the '50s and '60s. You know, the easy listening, Space Age pop, bossa nova and so on.
Todd: Directly related to that [clip of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - "You and Me (And the Bottle Makes Three)"] is the swing revival, which is much more popular for a brief period, and that one brings back the sound of the big bands. But 1998's neo-swing movement is quickly supplanted by [clips of Ricky Martin - Livin' La Vida Loca"...] 1999's Latin pop explosion, which dominates the conversation for the entire year and […Enrique Iglesias - "Bailamos"] sends out shockwaves that we are still feeling today.
Todd: There was an unexploited intersection of all these trends. And one man decided he was gonna be the first to exploit it.
Clips from an interview with Lou Bega
Todd (VO): His name is Lou Bega, and you might assume that, like the genre he adopted, he came from Cuba. Or at least somewhere in that vicinity, perhaps Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean in some way. He is none of those things. He is German.
Todd (VO): Yes. German.
Todd: His people's dance music sounds like this.
Clip of old black-and-white film recording of Schuhplattler dancers performing in public
Todd (VO): Okay, but you look at him, clearly he's not like, fully ethnically Deutsch, so, are his parents Cuban? Or anywhere close? No, not at all. His mother is Sicilian, his father is Ugandan. You might've thought differently from his name, but that's not his real name. His real name is David Lubega. Just a tiny change, but for these purposes, it's huge. Lubega as a last name, that's pretty distinctly African. But change Lubega to Lou Bega, and... I mean, look at that. You could easily guess that it's short for Luis Bega Rodriguez, or something.
Todd (VO): So how does a German-Ugandan-Sicilian wind up wanting to Mambo for a living? According to him, he discovered it on a trip to Florida. So basically, he's that friend of yours who did a semester abroad and came back with an accent.
Todd: But is that even true?
Todd (VO): [footage from interview with...] His manager, Goar Biesenkamp, he claims that Mambo was his idea. He was the one who loved Mambo and came up with Lou Bega's image and style, and that Lou Bega actually wanted to be a rapper at first.
Todd: In fact, you can see and hear [cover art of Balibu - "Let's Come Together"] a much different Lou Bega on this one-off German band's dance track from 1997.
Lou Bega: Throw your hands up in the air
Wave 'em around like you just don't care
Havin' a good time, we're gonna turn it out
Everybody, that's a holiday shout
Todd (VO): Let's say that I don't think he was the most technically-gifted emcee of his generation. But Biesenkamp says that, unlike other rappers in the Euro scene, Lou Bega was down for whatever. And so, he eagerly got onboard this Mambo project. And out came the pencil mustache, matching pinstripe suit and hat, and a nice old sample to build the persona around.
The big hit
Todd: [Pause] ...The other day, a friend of mine sent me something called "Mambo Number HONK."
Clip of above YouTube video plays
Todd (VO): It's "Mambo No. 5"...
Todd: ...played entirely with bike horns.
Todd (VO): He sent it to me because it was, quote, "the sound of pure chaos," so, naturally, I had to hear it.
More of the video plays
Todd: [Facepalming, then removes hand] I listen to this and I can feel myself losing all contact with reality.
Todd (VO): But... there's a question that I really have to ask myself:
Todd: Is this really any different than Lou Bega's actual "Mambo No. 5"?
Lou Bega: Ladies and gentlemen, this is "Mambo No. 5". One, two, three four five
Todd (VO): Bega's "Mambo No. 5" is built around the riff from Perez Prado's "Mambo N. 5". The lyrics about Monica and Sandra and Rita, those are all Lou, baby!
Todd: [Stares at fedora for a bit before putting it back on]...I guess I realize now why I've never covered "Mambo No. 5" before, which is... what is there to discuss?
Todd (VO): It just is what it is.
Lou Bega: A little bit of Monica in my life. A little bit of Erica
Todd (VO): [sigh] Well, I will say this about it: "Mambo No. 5" is basically the exact ideal model of the classic annoying one hit wonder. Impossibly catchy, an undeniable earworm, no one was surprised that it became a big hit... and yet it seemed to become extremely popular without anyone really enjoying it that much.
Todd: [waves fedora around a bit while talking before putting it back on] Yeah yeah yeah, not without anyone enjoying it, like...
Todd (VO): ...a wedding DJ who throws on "Mambo No. 5" will reliably keep the good vibes flowing, but
Todd: I cannot imagine someone saying that "Mambo No. 5" is their favorite song unless they're, like, 10.
Todd (VO): Because "Mambo No. 5" is an update of an old-timey genre, it's... somehow simultaneously timeless and extremely dated. It could not have been made in any other year but 1999.
Todd: It's got all the non-genre specific hallmarks of the late 90s:
Todd (VO): DJ scratches, the samples, the bouncing late '90s beat...
Todd: All of these things add up to make the song not really Mambo, or even a modern updating of Mambo.
Todd (VO): Like, this did not lead to a full genre revival.
Clips of neo-swing dancers at the club and Marc Anthony - "I Need to Know"
Todd (VO): There was a thriving Swing subculture, and Latin pop and Salsa were everywhere, but...
Todd: ...Mambo, the genre, did not really gain any benefit from "Mambo No. 5".
Todd (VO): There were no other Mambo crossovers, Mambo did not become more mainstream than it had already been; [Image pops up of...] the album was called A Little Bit of Mambo...
Todd: ...and that's what you get. A little bit and no more.
Todd (VO): So even though Lou Bega made a lot of money, he's not really in the conversation with any other music.
Todd: He is to Mambo what...
Live clip of...
Todd (VO): ...the Black Eyed Peas are to hip hop. Like, yes, they use the idioms, and the "sonic palette" of the genre, but that's not really their genre. Their real genre is...
Todd: ...annoying. That's where Lou Bega fits in.
Todd (VO): Part of the reason why the song is kind of a joke is... just Lou Bega himself! He turns it into basically a vaudeville song! He's singing about how he's got girls girls girls; waggling his eyebrows. If this song weren't so family friendly, he'd be chomping on his cigar, you know:
Todd: [imitating cartoon sound] HA CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA!
Various clips of old Mambo performances and dances
Todd (VO): And Mambo was a sweaty, dynamic genre, but it was also a classy one, with its ritzy nightclubs and pressed tuxedos... and there's just no dignity to this. It's an aggressively stupid song.
Todd: [sigh]...But god damn, is it catchy.
Live clip of "Mambo No. 5" plays
Lou Bega: One, two, three four five
Todd (VO): To this day, I can't count to 5 without going [imitating song] "ONE, TWO, A-THREE FOUR FIVE!"
Lou Bega: A little bit of Monica in my life
Todd (VO): If you put the [various names from the song pop up] list of girls in front of me, I could get it in correct order without even trying. [Names highlight red as Todd says them] It's "Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, Jessica."
Todd: Easy.
Todd (VO): The man knows how to write a hook. It's one of the stickiest songs ever made. I don't think even haters were surprised that it was a hit. It's just so catchy, it was everywhere!
Todd: I even remember the Disney version!
Clip of "Disney Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...)" plays
Lou Bega: A little bit of Minnie [pronounced "Mindy"] in my life. A little bit of Mickey by her side. A little bit of Donald's all I need.
Todd: ...Did Lou Bega have sex with Donald Duck? Is that the implication here?
Clip plays in the background of...
Todd (VO): And that was not even the only kids cover of this! UK cartoon "Bob the Builder" did his own version a couple years later!
Bob the Builder and Backup Singers: A little bit of timber and a saw. A little bit of fixing, that's for sure.
Todd: [sighs and shrugs]
Clip of Lou Bega's commercial for Kids' WB
Lou Bega: Brand new shows all morning including 3 new Pokemon [pronounced "pokey man"]! A little bit of Batman dropping in.
Todd (VO): It's funny this was so popular with kids considering it's about the parade of girls plowed by Lou Bega!
Back to original video for "Mambo No. 5"
Lou Bega: I like Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita
Todd (VO): For the record, he says this was inspired by his real life exploits and that all those girls are real.
Todd: Convenient that all their names rhymed.
Todd (VO): But even the sex is cartoony!
Clip of...
Todd (VO): He's like the horny wolf in the "Red Hot Riding Hood" sketches!
Todd: For what it's worth, I did see an [image pops up of news article showing...] interviewer ask Bega if he thought the song was, you know, [back to Todd] "#problematic," and he said "no," but the article said he'd clearly thought about this before. If you want my opinion... I think you'd have to try real hard to be offended by "Mambo No. 5."
Lou Bega: You can't run and you can't hide
Todd (VO): Okay, maybe I wouldn't have written that line, but the song's way too silly to take seriously on those terms. Like, have you heard anyone get mad at it for being sexist? Of-of course not!
Todd: Raunchiness isn't offensive anymore when it's retro! That's the rule.
Todd (VO): And to be fair to this song, for all that I don't like it, I also can't really bring myself to dislike it. I heard it over and over again in 1999, along with every other major pop hit.
Todd: And that was around the time I discovered that I was just a natural-born hater, I was like "this sucks and that sucks, I'm not listening to this shit,"
Todd (VO): and yet I don't remember ever really objecting to this song. It was just too catchy to turn off. If I were maybe a tiny bit older, I would've been like "that's stupid idiot crap for babies!" If I were a tiny bit younger, maybe it would've been my favorite song for a little while. As it is, I just kinda grudgingly accept it.
Todd: I mean, who wants to be the person who hates "Mambo No. 5?" Not me. I guess it's fine.
Todd (VO): But that doesn't mean I wanted any more of the guy. A little bit of Lou Bega in my life was plenty.
Todd: But Lou Bega... was not yet done.
The failed follow-up
Todd: [adjusting his hat] No man has ever given off One Hit Wonder vibes like Lou Bega did. [clip of Top of the Pops footage of Bega performing] It was written all over him the second he introduced himself. So, you might imagine that he immediately disappeared after his one song. That is not true. I was basically watching MTV and VH1 nonstop at the time, and I remember there was a short-lived but... serious push to give him a second hit.
Video for Lou Bega- "I Got a Girl"
Chorus: He's got a girlfriend everywhere!
Lou Bega: Ooooaaaahhhh!
Todd: His follow-up song to "Mambo No. 5" was called [title card for...] "I Got a Girl." And on it, you can really see Lou Bega expanding his persona on this second song into new, creative directions.
Lou Bega: I got a girl in Paris
I got a girl in Rome
I even got a girl in the Vatican Dome
Todd (VO): See, the first song was a list of all the girls he's banged.
Todd: But here, he switched it up with a list of places where all the girls he's banged are from.
Lou Bega: Africa, America, Europe and Australia
Asia, Canada, I take them all an' marry her
Todd: [takes off his fedora and twirls it] Lou Bega - he has sex with women!
Video for Lou Bega - "Tricky, Tricky"
Todd (VO): I don't remember seeing that one, but I do remember his other single "Tricky, Tricky", about a scheming girl.
Lou Bega: She likes access to your bank account
She likes dollars, she likes British pounds
Todd: I ain't saying she's a gold digger.
Lou Bega: Tricky, tricky
But she is pretty, pretty
Todd (VO): I can't believe I still remember this, but, I remember him being quoted that "Tricky, Tricky" was like his gender-flipped version of [clip of...] "No Scrubs".
TLC: No, I don't want no scrubs
Todd: You know, like we were all thinking, this is exactly like "No Scrubs"!
Todd (VO): I cannot find this quote now, but I swear it was real. I think he must have been worried about seeming sexist, so he was trying to...make the song seem like it was part of a two-way conversation. But seriously, come on, Lou.
Lou Bega: Every day she's looking for a man who gives her more
Todd (VO): [in disgusted tone] "No Scrubs". First off, there was literally already a gender-flipped version of "No Scrubs".
Clip of Sporty Thievz - "No Pigeons"
Sporty Thievz: No, I don't want no pigeons
And two, if you were going to compare it to any other hit from 1999, it would obviously be [clip of...] "Livin' La Vida Loca", another song about a crazy, wild chick who likes money.
Todd: Neither of these songs did anything in America. "I Got a Girl" did okay in some countries; "Tricky, Tricky" did not.
Todd (VO): Bega also got sued around this time. [Intercut clips of Bega and Perez Prado performing] Bega said "Mambo No. 5" was a new song, so he gave himself a songwriting credit on it, which, you know, seems fair to me; he did write all the lyrics. The Prado estate said it was a straight cover and demanded all the credits, and Bega eventually won, but it was rough going for a while. [Footage from a cable broadcast of Stuart Little] Incidentally, all you '90s kids probably remember his song from the credits of Stuart Little, called "One Plus One Is Two".
The song plays, making it clear that it's just "Mambo No. 5" with a different melody and lyrics
Lou Bega: Baby, show me 1 + 1 is 2
Show me all the things that you can do
It is such a ripoff of "Mambo No. 5" that the Prado estate should have sued for this one also.
Todd (VO): And, uh, I think that pretty much exposes the flaw in the Lou Bega persona. [clip of Lou Bega - "Mambo Mambo"] He's got one trick, and he already did the best version of it the first time. He was even referring to himself as "Mambo King", and [footage of...] Marc Anthony, who is not a guy who holds back, actually said [image of a news article in which Anthony criticizes Bega and his music] "Does he know how insulting that is?!"
Todd: Like no, you are not Tito Puente, bro. That'd be like Bruce Willis [footage of Willis performing "Under the Boardwalk" in 1987] calling himself "the King of Blues". So by the end of the year 2000, it was clearly over and done for him... or was it?
Did he ever do anything else?
Todd: [long pause, initially with head in hands]... "Has he ever done anything else?" Hoo boy, has he ever!
Clip of Lou Bega - "Gentleman"
Lou Bega: I am the type of freak that calls you seven days a week, you don't believe it
Todd (VO): His second album led off with something called "Gentleman", which is about how Lou Bega is...
Todd: And this will shock you...
Todd (VO): ...a total pimp who is really successful with ladies...
Todd: [sarcastically] In a sexual way, [shakes fedora] heh heh, heh
Lou Bega: I'm a gentleman
Todd: [sigh]
Clip of Lou Bega - "Just a Gigolo / I Ain't Got Nobody"
Lou Bega: I'm just a gigolo, and everywhere I go
Todd (VO): He followed that with a cover of "Just a Gigolo," which... I thought was gonna be way too obvious a song choice for this guy, but actually, this is a pretty good rendition of it!
Lou Bega: Nobody cares for me, nobody
Todd (VO): Lou Bega's gonna be a DLC in "Cuphead," by the way. But this was not even a hit in Germany.
Todd: Him having a second album at all... that's already pushing it for a novelty one hit wonder.
Todd (VO): Now sure, you can give him one more shot to make something happen... but he didn't.
Clips of Lou Bega performing play in the background
Todd (VO): And by this point, Bega himself was getting sick of his biggest hit, like... can you even imagine? I sure was, and I wasn't performing it every night. So, after the second album, he decided to step away from showbiz to spend more time with his family... and then he goes away forever, right?!
Todd: ... No, that is wrong.
Todd (VO): He eventually returned in 2006, and... actually, would you believe he was only 23 when "Mambo No. 5" came out?! I mean, he could be lying about his age, but...
Todd: ...even if he is, he's still way younger than I thought he was, because...
Todd (VO): ...this man is still going more than twenty years later, and he basically looks exactly the same.
Clip of Lou Bega - "Boyfriend"
Lou Bega: I hate your boy with all my heart
Todd (VO): Every few years, he manages to put out something new.
Todd: Granted, none of them really hit, and I wouldn't really recommend any of it.
Clip of Lou Bega - "Sweet Like Cola"
Todd (VO): Here's the one about how you're beautiful even if you're fat.
Lou Bega: I love your curves and believe me it is every pound (pound, pound, every pound)
Todd (VO): Fellas, you gotta stop making songs like this.
Todd: He also has tried to make songs more recently that were... less aggressive and less '90s.
Clip of Lou Bega - "Bongo Bong"
Lou Bega: But I'm the king of bongo, baby, I'm the king of bongo bong
Todd (VO): He seems a bit... ill-equipped to make music this laid back, I'd say. If you're not gonna make really obnoxious dance music, what's the point?
Todd: But I gotta be honest, I'm really impressed that he's kept this going for so long!
Various clips of Lou Bega performing in recent years play in the background
Todd (VO): This was a schtick basically forced on him twenty years ago, and he seems to have absolutely no regrets.
Todd: So on that note,
Clip of Lou Bega - "Scatman & Hatman"
Todd (VO): Here is his most recent single: [sic] "Scatman vs. Hatman"
Lou Bega: And I'm the Hatman
Todd (VO): A remix of, and tribute to, previous "One Hit Wonderland" subject Scatman John.
Lou Bega: To the feel of the hat-scat mambo
Scatman John: Everybody's sayin' that the Scatman stutters but doesn't ever stutter when he sings
Todd (VO): Scatman was a guy whose music and story I enjoyed a lot more, but I gotta admit... Lou Bega has that same kind of heartwarming vibe. This is a guy who found his one thing and just kept riding it.
Clip of Lou Bega performing plays in the background
Todd (VO): I kinda admire the tenacity. And wherever he shows up, people seem to be having a good time. [static image of Lou pops up] Make this guy just, like, 20% cooler... [image pops up of] he's basically Pitbull, right?
Todd: [shrugs] You can't knock the hustle.
Did he deserve better?
Todd: Mmm... no... but I kinda want to say yeah.
Lou Bega: A little bit of Monica in my life
Todd (VO): Here's a guy that could be embarrassed by his one hit, or resentful that he never had a second, but he's out there still living life to the fullest.
Todd: I don't really like "Mambo No. 5," and you're gonna have to really stretch to convince me that it's a good song.
Todd (VO): But would the world be missing something without "Mambo No. 5?" Yeah, I think so.
Todd: If you like it, though... maybe check out some actual Mambo too. [removes fedora and places it on his mic, then gets up to leave]
Lou Bega: Mambo number 5!
Closing Tag Song: Metlmeta - "Mambo No. Honk"
THE END
"Mambo No. 5" is owned by Ariola Records
This video is owned by me