Aire

To keep myself entertained (and hopefully you, too), I'm starting to post videos/performances/recordings of songs I like from my recent Top 10 albums list, along with other music that has had an impact on me over the years.

Some of it will be marvelous (to me), some of it will be execrable (to you), and some of it will be a bit of both. But, hey, that pretty much sums up my tastes, and at the ripe old age of 58, I'm tired of apologizing for what I like.

Second up: Yuri, "Cuando baja la marea" (rough translation: "When the tide goes out").

This was a song I heard over and over again on my first trip to Mexico in 1987 or so. Somehow in the days before Shazam and the worldwide web, I tracked it down and was able to find a copy of the album (OK, cassette, most likely!) and bring it home with me, along with a tape by Alejandra Guzman (who, like Yuri, has stood the test of time in Mexican popular music) and another group, Viva Voz, who are now lost to the ages (or at least to me).

It's a very straightforward ballad (this video features a different, more rhythmic interpretation than the original), but it is booming, emotional, passionate, and melodic, which is pretty much what you want in a pop song. I still get a "frisson" hearing it 30+ years later.

On that same trip to Mexico, I also went to a gay bar and saw an amazing drag show (and I don't really even like drag) during which one of the performers dressed like Yuri (correction: was Yuri, captured Yuri's essence as it were) and performed (in stilettos no less) another Yuri hit from the era, "Hombres al borde de un ataque de celos" (rough translation: "Men on the verge of a jealousy breakdown"). Another Yuri classic but in a different, very poppy way, with a song and video that launched a thousand drag queens.

I don't know a huge amount about Yuri, but from what I do know, she kind of has this great life story, one that cemented her status as a romantic female diva/gay male and straight female icon of a sort: Child star, successful singer, early marriage and divorce, drug addiction, sex addiction, religious conversion (but still stayed loyal to her gay fans), Christian singer, return to secular music, another marriage and adoption, continued personal and professional success. At least that's what I recall reading several years ago.

Who knows? I may have it completely wrong, but why change my possibly imaginary narrative at this point?