In August of 1987, Los Lobos’ version of ‘La Bamba’ became the fifth non-English song to top Billboard’s Hot 100. The song was included on the soundtrack of the film of the same name, a biopic of 50s rock star Ritchie Valens.
Valens’ version of ‘La Bamba,’ which Los Lobos channeled quite well, reached #22 on the same chart in 1958. It peaked the day before he died, at just 17, in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper).
It took 23 years before another non-English track topped the Billboard Hot 100, with Austrian artist Falco achieving the feat with his New Wave bop ‘Rock Me Amadeus.’ The song remains the only German-language song to ever reach #1 on the Hot 100. Nena came close a few years earlier, but her ’99 Luftballons’ peaked at #2.
The song’s lyrics describe Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a womanizing rock star in his day, incredibly talented but saddled by debts. This depiction was familiar to audiences who had watched Milos Forman’s film Amadeus nearly sweep the Academy Awards just two years earlier.
The second non-English song to reach #1 on the Hot 100 was Kyu Sakamoto’s ‘Sukiyaki,’ which I wrote about this past weekend. That was in June of 1963, five years after ‘Volare.’
It was later the same year that Soeur Sourire, also known as The Singing Nun, took the next non-English song to #1. Though Sourire was Belgian, she wrote and performed her chart-topping hit ‘Dominque’ in French.
On Saturday, I mentioned that only nine songs in languages other than English have topped Billboard’s Hot 100. This week I’ll reveal those titles in chronological order.
The first song to pull off the feat was 1958’s ‘Nel blu, dipinto di blu’ (popularly known as ‘Volare’), a ballad co-written and performed by Italian performer Domenico Modugno. Not only was this the first non-English #1 in Hot 100 history, it was just the second #1 on the Hot 100, period, as the chart had debuted just two weeks prior. So for a very brief time, 50% of all Hot 100 chart-toppers were in Italian.
Throwing back to the week of June 23, 1973, we find Paul McCartney & Wings holding on to the top spot with ‘My Love,’ featured here earlier this month.
Right behind is a one-hit wonder that spent 23 weeks on this chart but never made it higher than #2. ‘Playground in My Mind’ was recorded by Clint Holmes, an English-born entertainer who was raised in the States and has been a Las Vegas entertainer for most of his five-decade career.
Meet Me In Montauk 