Half of the First Round of our 90’s Bangers Bracket is ongoing. The other half is finished. Let’s talk about that other half. Specifically, let’s talk about that matchup between Mambo No. 5 and My Own Worst Enemy.
Mambo No. 5 won. This is understandable, even if I personally voted for My Own Worst Enemy (more of a banger, by my undefined definition). The people love Mambo No. 5. They always have. As one of this website’s supporters mentioned by text Thursday night: “I remember thinking in my head ‘Mambo No. 5 might be the best song ever created’ when I was 11.” A bold statement, but can you blame an eleven year-old in the suburban United States for thinking this? And how many of you thought, “Kid’s got a point,” when reading that just now? Mambo No. 5 was then, and is now, central to our human experience. At the time our friend was thinking that thought, I—a five year-old—had no idea what the song was about, but I was familiar with yards, and I thought the “a little bit of Mary all night long” line said “a little bit of Mary on my lawn,” which obviously made my family really amused, and while I thought they just found it funny that I got the words confused, I now understand it had more to do with the idea of Lou Bega making a radio hit about having sex in his front yard.
Of course, while I only thought Lou Bega was singing about things going down on the lawn, Lit’s own front yard really was front and center (Side note: Yeah, it’s awesome that the band is named Lit. It’s like they made a time machine and went back and named their band in the way that would best accompany the song in 2020: “My Own Worst Enemy — Lit.” Could be the name of the artist. Could just be a description of the work.). I don’t remember knowing My Own Worst Enemy as a five year-old, but maybe this was where my confusion came from regarding where Lou and Mary were getting it on. Maybe I thought all songs paid homage to front yards, something my family still had at the time (nothing sad—we had two great side yards, each useful for play in its own way—the front yard just eventually got turned into a cool, big garden with a fence that caused quite the conflict with the village’s zoning people). Probably not. But maybe.
1. Opening
Both songs are perfect from the first moments, but Mambo No. 5 is built for a dramatic beginning, and Lou Bega does not disappoint. In the half-a-second between Bega announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Mambo No. 5,” and the beat kicking in, a tingle runs through the listener’s body that nature reserves for dramatic positive plot twists. It starts in the innards. It washes over the shoulders. It lingers in the fingertips. The soul rushes for the nearest dance floor.
The opening riff of My Own Worst Enemy similarly sends the soul rushing for the nearest dance floor, but not so much out of a sense of anticipation as one of being late to something essential and unannounced. Human beings can escalate their energy quickly when necessary, but when the song itself contains enough adrenaline to make a rabbit explode and projects that adrenaline from the first notes, it’s on the listener to catch up and seek out the nearest euphoric mosh pit (Side note on mosh pits: I’m a big fan of the euphoric kind that’s more like a jumping dog pile—not as big a fan of the sadistic kind where people clear out a circle and run around beating each other up. Feel like there’s a distinction there.).
2. How They Make You Feel
The most important thing about a song. Unless you’re in ancient times and songs are being used to pass information down across generations, in which case, you do you.
Mambo No. 5 makes everyone feel like they can dance.
My Own Worst Enemy makes me want to throw a fully loaded semi-truck into the Grand Canyon.
One is unbridled joy and laughter. The other is the most cathartic, pleasurable nostalgic rage—sweet and furious and thorough.
3. Content Matter
It took me a while to distill this to a sentence, but I think Mambo No. 5 is just a song about how cool Lou Bega is. That’s what it’s about, right? Isn’t the takeaway always just, “Wow, Lou Bega is so fucking cool,” said entirely unironically? I mean, that guy is cool. We, the rest of humanity, can’t empathize. We are not that cool. Some of us aren’t cool at all (I blog about the NIT). For three minutes and forty seconds, Lou Bega lets us know what it feels like to be cool.
My Own Worst Enemy is a song about having been destructively drunk, something maybe not all of us have done, but a lot of us have done. It’s a song about a hangover, and an exact kind of hangover: One where you wake up still a bit drunk, so the headache isn’t there yet; and you have a lot of work to do to clean up what you’ve done; but it’s kind of liberating for the moment; and there’s some humor because shit went down.
4. Little Things
I love how much Lou Bega loves trumpets in Mambo No. 5. The entire bridge is him enjoying the existence of trumpets.
In My Own Worst Enemy, when A. Jay Popoff sings, “‘Cause every now and then, I kick the living shit out of me,” we all feel that. That moment of unfiltered angst with who we are. And it feels good.
5. The Ending
Mambo No. 5’s ending is neat and tidy. It leaves the people smiling. Laughing. Walking slowly to the bar to grab a drink because we’re not all dancing to the next one like we just danced to Mambo No. 5.
My Own Worst Enemy leaves us wanting more. The song isn’t even three minutes long. It wraps up well, but man, we’d do it again if given the chance.
