A History of Ricky Martin’s 2000 hit She Bangs
This world doesn’t deserve Ricky Martin, but we are happy to have him here regardless
Ricky Martin is the treasure we don’t deserve in 2018. He is much better than anyone else on this earth, and I won’t be arguing about that, so don’t even say a word, Sheila.
But many people don’t remember that before he took to ignoring the English speaking market because we are absolute turds, Ricky ascended to superstardom by making music in English. “She Bangs” was one of these songs.
At the time it came out, “She Bangs” and Ricky’s entire album Sound Loaded were seen as disappointing compared to the undeniable “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and Martin’s self titled 1999 album. We now know that this is a result of us being extremely bad at telling which things are good (ex: “She Bangs”) and which things are bad (ex: electing a President Trump, that fucking song “Moves Like Jagger”).
Sound Loaded contains diamonds in the rough like “Amor,” “Loaded,” and “One Night Man.” The album is of a calibre rarely seen in the 20th or 21st century, and belongs among such classics as The Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed, Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, and Prince’s Sign o’ the Times.
Let’s really get into this song now. Yes, we have to, Sheila.
You lit a fuse, and now I’m ticking away
Like a bomb, yeah baby
In this line, Martin cleverly uses metaphor to liken his emotional state to the tension that a ticking bomb elicits in the bomb itself. This is widely believed to be the first instance in popular music of a singer considering the bomb’s feelings in a lit fuse situation. After Martin gives us this glimpse into a bomb’s complex inner life, he tosses off a “yeah baby” as if it were NBD. We are witnessing an artist at the peak of his powers.
Well if Lady Luck gets on my side
We’re gonna rock this town alive
Lady Luck plays a pivotal role in the winding story line of this dense work of art. Here, Martin would like her to favour him so that he may “rock this town alive.”
I go crazy ’cause she looks like a flower
But she stings like a bee
Like every girl in history
Here, Martin uses the rhetorical tool of simile to liken the woman he is enamoured with to a flower, with a deceptively innocuous outward appearance, when in reality she is more like a bee who will sting him and then die immediately, because that’s what bees do. By comparing the object of his affection to a bee, Martin is highlighting the harm that being seen as sexual playthings does to women, even as they are complicit in the game. This is nothing new, Martin reminds us, as every single girl in history has also faced this paradoxical quandary.
She reminds me that a woman’s
Got one thing on her mind
In this memorable line, Martin plays with assumptions we make about gender and sexuality. He turns the broadly accepted notion of demure female sexuality on its head, stating that women, too, are sexual beings who only think about sex. This line essentially predicts Trump’s astounding rise by warning us that both men and women are too busy thinking about sex to elect a competent person to office. And then, boom, 16 years later, this came to pass. Just amazing.
Your rap sounds like a diamond map
To the stars, yeah baby
This line will be studied by scholars for centuries to come. I personally have no idea what it means, but it has an ethereal beauty that haunts me in my quietest moments.
Well if it looks like love should be a crime
They better lock me up for life
I’ll do the time with a smile on my face
Thinking of her in her leather and lace
Here, Martin is bold enough to say that if love is a crime, then he is willing to be locked up. This lyric is astounding for its social commentary, though we didn’t know it at the time. You see, Martin is gay, and we have a long history of locking up gay people for simply loving. Just another example of how this world doesn’t deserve Ricky Martin. We are happy to have him here regardless!! This lyric is also interesting because he seems to hint at Versace’s aesthetic (leather and lace), and then went on to star in a mini-series that came out this year about the designer’s murder. It’s good to know that Martin has always been a fan.
Though this article is getting pretty long for what it is, I’d be remiss to ignore the musical accompaniment. The horns! The percussion! The other stuff! This song bangs, which is meta before meta was the thing to do.
So Sheila and all you other people, I hope this has served to shed some light on this criminally (lock me up for life!) underrated work of an artist in his prime. She Bangs is the art we don’t deserve, as William Hung definitely proved (google that if you don’t know what I’m talking about because I don’t want to say another word about that bullshit), but it is the art we need at this moment in human history.
