I remember it used to strike me as odd that in Mexican slang they’d use the word “padre” as synonym of “cool,” because in my rebellious eternally-adolescent worldview there was nothing more uncool than a dad. I’d tell my Mexican friends, “No, don’t say my song is padre! To me that means it’s conservative, boring, lame… that’s like, to me, everything fathers represent.”
Of course, what fathers in general represented to me was very much an extrapolation of my experience with my own authoritarian father. And of course, that negative image of fatherhood I had started changing when cool friends of mine started to become papis themselves. Still, when my editora (who’s Mexican but, for the record, never said any of the work I submitted was “padre,” and never called me papi either) contacted me with the idea of doing a top ten for Fathers Day, and my obvious first reaction was: “but father-songs by definition suck!”
Then we started brainstorming and coming up with candidates to fill the list, and of course the whole first wave of songs we found sucked, but after a while we started digging out others, and we were like, “Hey, this one is not that bad.” So, to make a long story short, here it is, our ten songs about fathers that don’t suck too much.
10. “Hoy tengo que decirte papá“
by Timbiriche
[Mexico]
Similar to Data, I had a similar complex to the whole, “Let’s do something awesome for Fathers Day” thing, cause it’s not like father day-themed songs that are great reign on us commonly. We especially had a hard time believing that these type of songs would be suitable for this site, and probably more for Latina Mag.
Kind of like this one. A submission that our Mexican graphic designer, Katro, suggested. A bunch of little kids that would grow up to be some of the most mainstream Latin artists of today. But hey, we’ll forgive them for this one cause any little boy and girl should be close to papá. I mean, that’d be nice and probably avoid the whole gang banging experience to a limit when they grow up.-IR
[insert-video youtube=4UETdOE8zLU]
09. “Rey Sol”
by Fito Páez [Argentina]
A song about fatherhood from the perspective of the father, in this case Argentine rock legend Fito Páez, who in 2000 dedicated this song and the whole album of the same title to his newborn son Martín.
Over a funky beat, Fito talks about how the baby brought new light into his life, like a sun, which is cute, but then fills the other half of the song with a lot of la-la-lara-la-la and repeats the chorus a bit too much. A sign that he had lost the lyrical dexterity he exuded on his late ’80s/early ’90s phase or that he was simply too busy changing diapers to sit down and write good songs. -JD
[insert-video youtube=CpLrw7cLEgM]
07. “Pobre Papá”
by El Cuarteto de Nos
[Uruguay]
Feminists love complaining about the roles imposed to women by the worldwide conspiracy of the Patriarchal System. But what about the imposition of lame-ass roles this system has in store for men, specially when they become fathers?
“Daddy doesn’t wanna go to work,” says this song, “he’d rather stay home all day and be a mantenido.” But of course poor daddy, he has to fulfill the expectations imposed by a system that tells us that “work is health” and he answers back: “then send the sick to work!” -JD
[insert-video youtube=YmyqGvCSvrM]
03. “Vos Sabés”
by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
[Argentina]
At one point Los Fabulosos Cadillacs grew thick beards and round bellies, and all of a sudden, they didn’t wanna die playing ska anymore. What happened? They started having babies.
This video caused a lot of controversy in its time because of the abundant nudity, but those who saw something remotely offensive about it totally missed the point.
This is definitely one of LFC’s most beautiful songs ever and at the same time one of the best songs about fatherhood (from the father’s point of view) that was ever aired on Latin American MTV during its hey-day. -JD
