Throughout the past decades, we enjoyed and danced to many Latin songs; sometimes, we didn’t even know what their lyrics meant, but they gave us good vibes and heartwarming memories.

Today I gathered the most beautiful, unforgettable songs from the 33 countries of Latin America that have been performed through time.

1. Hero – Enrique Iglesias

“Hero” is a song by Spanish singer-songwriter Enrique Iglesias from his second English-language studio album Escape (2001); to date, the single has sold over 8 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time.

“Hero” has a meaning of love and assurance with a desire to be a hero for the love of a woman.

Iglesias stated that his high school days were the inspiration for the song. During a 2013 radio interview with Ryan Seacrest, he said, “I went back to when I was 17 in high school, and this might be cheesy, but I thought about what would be the song I want to slow dance to with my prom date.

2. La Paloma

“La Paloma,” “The Dove” in English, is a popular Spanish song produced and reinterpreted in diverse cultures, settings, arrangements, and recordings over the last 140 years.

There are more than one thousand versions of this song; it is one of the most-recorded songs in the history of music; it is undoubtedly the most-recorded Spanish song.

The motif of “La Paloma” (the dove) can be traced back to an episode in 492 BC, before Darius the Great’s invasion of Greece, when the white dove had not yet been seen in Europe.

The Persian fleet under Mardonius was caught in a storm off the shore of Mount Athos and wrecked when the Greeks observed white doves escaping from the sinking Persian ships.

Those were probably homing pigeons that the Persian fleet carried with them when sallying forth out of Persia for battle. This inspired the notion that such birds bring home a final message of love from a sailor lost at sea.

3. Dançando Lambada – Kaoma

“Dançando Lambada” is a song by French-Brazilian group Kaoma with the Brazilian vocalist Loalwa Braz . The second single from Kaoma’s debut album Worldbeat followed the smash worldwide hit “Lambada.”

Released in October 1989, it achieved success, peaking at No.4 in France, No.6 in Switzerland, and No.11 in Ireland.

4. Lambada – Kaoma

Kaoma dropped the song of the summer in July 1989, a catchy Brazilian track accompanied by a racy video that made an instant impression.

Soon enough, it was topping the charts in Europe, followed by Latin America, and finally, the United States when “Lambada” hit number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Chart and spent seven weeks in that position.

It also peaked at number 46 on the Hot 100 in 1990 and sold 5 million copies worldwide. Quite the feat for a tune sung entirely in Portuguese.

“Lambada” became a worldwide hit thanks to its accompanying dance; it was  marketed as “the forbidden dance.”

5. The Ketchup Song – Las Ketchup

“The Ketchup Song (Aserejé)” is the debut single by Spanish pop group Las Ketchup, taken from their debut studio album Hijas del Tomate (2002). The song is about a man who enters a nightclub while singing and dancing.

It was released in 2002 and became an international hit the same year. It reached number one in at least 20 European countries and became the best-selling hit of 2002 in eight of them.

The song’s dance routine was a popular novelty dance in the early 2000s. As of 2006, the song had sold over 7 million copies worldwide. It also topped the music charts of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand but stalled at number 54 in the United States.

6. Bailamos – Enrique Iglesia

“Bailamos” (English: “We Dance”) is a single by Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias sung in Spanglish; the song was released in 1999 as part of the soundtrack to the 1999 film Wild Wild West and later as the lead single from Iglesias’s fourth and debut English-language album, Enrique (1999).

“Bailamos” reached number one on the Spanish Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100, and it became a top-three hit in Canada, Hungary, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden.

7. Conga – Gloria  Estefan ft. Miami Sound Machine

8. La Bamba – Los Lobos

“La Bamba” is a Mexican folk song, originally from Veracruz; the music is best known for a 1958 adaptation by Ritchie Valens, a Top 40 hit on the U.S. charts. Valens’s version is ranked number 345 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all time.

“La Bamba” has been covered by numerous artists, notably Los Lobos, whose version was the title track of the 1987 film La Bamba, a bio-pic about Valens; their version reached No. 1 in many charts in the same year.

9. Macarena – Los Del Río

“Macarena” is a Spanish dance song by Latin pop duo Los del Rio, about a woman of the same name, appearing on the 1993 album A mi me guesta; it was an international hit and dance craze in the latter half of 1996 and part of 1997.

The song got the group ranked the “No. 1 Greatest One-Hit Wonder of All Time” by VH1  in 2002. In 2012, it was ranked No. 7 on Billboard’s  All-Time Top 100; it also ranked No. 1 on Billboard’s All-Time Latin Songs.

10. Livin’ La Vida Loca – Ricky Martin

“Livin’ La Vida Loca”  (the Crazy Life) is a song recorded by Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin for his fifth studio album and English-language debut, Ricky Martin (1999); it was released to radio stations by Columbia Records as the lead single from the album on March 23, 1999.

The song is about an irresistible, particularly sinister wild woman who lives on the edge, seducing others into her crazy world; it was ranked as Elle’s best 1990s pop song and was listed among the Best Latin Songs of All Time by Billboard.

11. Besame Mucho

“Bésame Mucho” (Kiss Me A Lot) is a bolero song written in 1940 by Mexican songwriter Consuelo Velazques.] It is considered[one of the most popular songs of the 20th century and one of the most important hymns in the history of Latin Music.

It was also recognized in 1999 as the most recorded and covered song in Spanish of all time; famous versions were sung by Trio Los Panchos and female vocalist Gigliola Cinquetti in 1968 and by Dalida in 1976.

According to Velázquez herself, she wrote this song even though she had never been kissed yet at the time, and kissing, as she heard, was considered a sin.

12. The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz

“Garota de Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”) is a Brazillian song; it was a worldwide hit in the mid-1960s and won a Grammy for Record of the year in 1960, written in 1962.

The Stan Getz recording featuring the vocal debut of Astrud Gilberto became an international hit; in the US, the single peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and went to number one for two weeks on the Easy Listening chart; it peaked at number 29 in the United Kingdom and charted highly throughout the world.
The song was inspired by Heloisa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, a seventeen-year-old girl living on Montenegro Street in Ipanema; daily, she would stroll past the Veloso bar-café, not just to the beach (“each day when she walks to the sea”), but in the ordinary course of her life.
She would sometimes enter the bar to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave to the sound of wolf whistles; in the winter of 1962, the composers saw the girl pass by the bar. Since the song became popular, she has become a celebrity.

13. Volare – Gypsy Kings

“Nel blu, dipinto di blu” In the blue, popularly known as “Volare,” is a song originally recorded by Italian singer-songwriter Domenico Modugno. Written by Modugno, it was released as a single on 1 February 1958.

The song spent five non-consecutive weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, in August and September 1958, and subsequently became Billboard’s number-one single for the year.

The combined sales of all the song versions exceed 22 million copies worldwide, making it one of the most popular Eurovision songs of all time and one of the most successful Sanremo Music Festival songs ever.

The song was later translated into several languages and recorded by various performers; Gypsy kings performed the most popular one.

Stay tuned; we’ll be updating soon.

Update: Amr Diab’s Facebook Page announced that “Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been restored successfully and you can follow Amr’s tweets normally now”

Amr Diab got hacked on Twitter

On Thursday 9th of Jan, Amr Diab’s Facebook page announced that Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been hacked by anonymous and now tweeting politics!

Amr Abdul-Basset Abdul-Azeez Diab  (born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. He was awarded the World Music Award for Best Selling Middle East Artist, three times: 1998 for the album “Nour El Ain”, 2002 for the album “Aktrr Wahid Byhbak 2001” and 2007 for the album “El Lillady”. Amr Diab also won The African Music Awards 2009, Big Apple Music Awards; Life Achievements Awards: Best Singer of The Year in 2009, and Best Male Act in African Music Awards 2010.

He is known as the Father of Mediterranean Music He has created his own style which is often termed “Mediterranean Music” or “Mediterranean Sound”, a blend of Western and Egyptian rhythms.

In The Mediterranean in Music, David Cooper and Kevin Dawe referred to his music as “the new breed of Mediterranean music”.According to author Michael Frishkopf, Amr Diab has produced a new concept of Mediterranean music, especially in his international hit, “Nour El Ain”.

In his analysis of The Very Best of Amr Diab album, Victor W. Valdivia of All music said: “His music melded traditional Arabic sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instruments. The mesh was dubbed Mediterranean music, and The Very Best of Amr Diab displays Diab’s superb skill in creating it.”

In 1997, he won three awards at the Annual Arabic Festival: one for Best Video, for Best Song, and for Best Artist of the Year. Diab received a Triple Platinum Award for the sales of Nour El Ain and a World Music Award in Monaco.

After the success of the previously shared overall analysis of Sherine’s new album “Ana Keter” and her social media presence, we decided to fulfill your requests with more details and additional insights.

The report is from Jan 15 through Jan 31, 2014; however, starting Feb, we noticed that Sherine’s team has enhanced and developed how they engage with fans on Facebook.

Still, there’s more to do; please review the slides below to know what exactly they are missing with recommendations.

Check out the report:

Key take-outs in 15 days after the launch:

• Album gained 11 million views in 2 weeks on YouTube
• YouTube Channel subscribers boosted by 90K subscribers in 15 days out of 127K total subscribers overtime
• Buzz reached 15K tweets/RTs since the launch on Twitter
• How do people talk about the album/Sherine on Twitter?
• People are sharing songs from YouTube & SoundCloud
• +90% positive sentiment on Twitter
• Sherine’s Twitter account is excellent at spreading the news about the album’s success.
• People are tweeting the song’s lyrics.
• Sarcastic tweets about Sherine & few songs (regular) -  Almost zero negativity about the album
• Album teasers on Facebook created credibility for Sherine’s page, reflected in the page results after the album’s launch in the next 15 days with 92K Interactions & 312K New Likes.
• The album received tremendous engagement on the launching date of Jan 15. However, no posts for four days after the launch negatively affected the interactions.

Recommendations:

Sherine Abdel Wahab’s Facebook page would have received double or maybe triple new likes and interactions if the improved posts’ quality; please find below the points taken:

• Long updates with no extra value-added will lead to losing your fans’ interest
• The text-only format isn’t preferred, as it is well-known that they generate less reach than other content (Facebook announcement)
• A call to action is essential to generate leads & increase engagement
• Each post has to have its visual, audio, or video so you can attract/engage your audiences
• Understand the situation and act upon it, always be relevant to the time and avoid posting irrelevant content at the wrong time.
• Revise the tone of voice in future activities.

To recap -  Overall performance is average to good -  Enhance your content formatting -  Improve the tone of voice on all networks -  Be creative to engage your fans better -  Be Consistent -  Start your SoundCloud account.