Besame mucho what is

Yet there's no question that, at the very least, "Besame Mucho" epitomized the distinct allure of non-Anglo, non-European music for listeners only vaguely acquainted with it. For starters, there were the words, which from the opening conveyed a romantic urgency far removed from the typical, easy-listening pop song of , when Velazquez's masterpiece was first recorded by Emilio Tuero.

In that phrase, Velazquez's lyric expressed more meaning than even some of the song's devotees may have realized.

To Velazquez, the lyrics represented her own romantic longings, which she acknowledged had not been addressed when she originally conceived the song, as a teenager in Mexico. But by writing about a kiss to be delivered as if "for the last time," she unintentionally may have reached listeners who indeed believed they were partaking in a final embrace -- before being separated by World War II.

Yet the power of "Besame Mucho" extends well beyond its lyrics, if only because millions of English-language listeners never encountered Velazquez's original text. An American lyric by Sunny Skylar, popularized in Jimmy Dorsey's million-selling version and re-recorded by Dean Martin and dozens more, offered a far more generic, watered-down message:.

Yet the song continued to soar in popularity from the s to the present, recorded by everyone from Elvis Presley to Mario Lanza, from the Coasters to Celine Dion. Music Period: s. Genres: Bolero , Popular Song. So it's not surprising that the first wave of the song's popularity came in the early s during World War II when women were waiting for any news of their husbands from the battlefront.

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