Paco Ibáñez en el Olympia was an album recorded in the famous Parisian venue in 1969. It has since become one of the great classic albums of Spanish music, and a window into a very particular time and place in both Spain’s and France’s recent history. Ibáñez had been banned from performing in public in…

Juntos is an uplifting, life-affirming love song. In recent years, the 1982 hit from Madrileña singer Paloma San Basilio has come to be seen as something of a gay anthem, which has helped to keep the song alive and relevant for new, younger audiences. It is very much a ‘gay’ song in the old sense…

Chico conoce a chica. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl stop seeing each other. Boy and girl bump into each other in a club after one year. Timidly, they start chatting and… Well, you guessed. What had to happen, happened. The song is called El encuentro (The encounter), and is track #4 from Tiene que…

Argentinian singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral was a true bohemian. He was taught to read at fourteen by a Jesuit teacher and met his father at forty-six. These and other experiences – his wife and daughter died on a plane crash – came to shape his outlook on life and his music. His signature song, No soy…

José Ángel Espinoza, better known as Ferrusquilla, was a Mexican songwriter and actor. Early in his career he became known as El Hombre de las Mil Voces, for his ability to play multiple characters for radio drama productions and to (allegedly) being able to impersonate God himself! One of Ferrusquilla’s most recorded songs was El…

Brace yourself: it’s Putochinomaricón! And he’s not amused! And he’s using the subjunctive!! “Yo creo que la buena música surge de los intestinos y del odio extremo”, says Chenta Tsai, born in 1990 of Taiwanese parents. ‘I think Good music springs from the guts and from extreme hatred’. Here’s one of the key tenets of…

“Yo quería hacer un disco que le gustara a mi madre y a mi padre”, said Bunbury in 1999 while discussing Pequeño, his second solo álbum, released later that year. ‘I wanted to make a record that my mum and my dad liked’. Sure enough, the album became a major departure for Bunbury in that…

“Todo el mundo sabe que es difícil encontrar en la vida un lugar…” Thus goes the opening line of Camino Soria by Spanish band Gabinete Caligari, the song we’re discussing in this episode. By the river Duero, the town of Soria (North of Madrid, in Castilla la Mancha) becomes here an almost mystical place where…

We’re on a trip to Disneylandia! Today we learn about the dubbings of Disney films for Spanish and Latin American audiences. We then go on to study Lady and the Tramp’s infamous Siamese Cats Song. Listen to Si and Am singing in a suspicious Thai accent, with a genuine Mexican flavour and a touch of…

So you still don’t know what being in love is like? Stress no more: Spanish crooner Raphael gives you no less than twelve different definitions of such state in Estar enamorado (To be in love), a song from 1981 written by the singer’s habitual partner in crime, Manuel Alejandro. Together, Raphael and Alejandro have formed…