How did “La Lambada” become the musical hit of the century?

At a time when the hits of the summer have disappeared, absorbed by the multiple distribution channels of the web and by our mobile phone playlists, music specialists have returned to the musical phenomenon of the summer of 1989. During from the program “Le Débat de midi”, they told Jean-Mathieu Pernin how at the end of the 1980s, a record sold almost 2 million copies thanks to an unprecedented hype.

A marketing idea

Olivier Kaefer, creator of the RFM Party 80 and today turner for “Totalement 80” remembers “that at the maneuver it was Dominique Cantien, the popess of the summer hit. This variety director of TF1 was to revolutionize the antenna to counter the departure of the spectators towards other chains. She launched this group on June 21, 1989 at the Champ-de-Mars. I was there, I remember it. It was the great Night of the tubes We discovered ‘La Lambada’ and it was an immediate hit.

Everything had been thought out upstream in terms of marketing to produce this musical success as an ordinary product. It wasn’t an original band, it was put together. The singer was Brazilian, and the dancers, French”.

A hit that enjoys exceptional editorial coverage

Thierry Dupin, music programmer at France Inter, rummaged through the archives and he “found in The chained Ducktwo pages in Releasethe first page of World… A similar social phenomenon, I only found it with ‘Loft Story’ (first reality TV show in France in 2001) a few years later. This coup surprised everyone.” He adds that “not only did Kaoma benefit from the incredible firepower of TF1, which at the time represented a 40% market share, but also from the broadcast of 242 advertising spots for the Orangina brand which covered the song. This is a huge unexpected editorial blow. It’s an even bigger publicity stunt than they expected.”

A turning point for the music industry

Sophian Fanen analyzes: “‘La Lambada’ is a totem. There is a before and an after, like the loft or musicals in the early 2000s. The concept was taken up by Las Ketchup with “Asereje” in 2002. And copied even in the partnership with a soda brand. The 1989 hit was the model for the following. “

Thierry Dupin specifies that “the success of this song is mainly due to the producers who had the hollow nose and who benefited from the incredible opportunity of this artistic director of TF1 who was in search of success. Moreover, I believe to know that these producers had previously made the rounds of the record labels without succeeding in placing ‘The Lambada’. Only Sony, now CBS, said: “Banco!”. There was an incredible alignment of planets. We will never have that again.”

A not very clean model

Sophian Fanen continues, “We learned that the music was stolen from a Bolivian band without asking them. The band got their rights back a few years later. And the dance itself came from the Brazilian name which was called ‘The Lambada’. It is the manufacture of an object which is moreover exotic, but which does not exist. It’s vaguely Brazilian exoticism, made for the French or European public.”

All this cost nothing to the record company

Olivier Kaefer: “It should be noted that all of this cost nothing, neither to the producers, nor to the record company, nor to the channel”. “It’s the drink that sponsored, and paid for everything”, explains Thierry Dupin: “Their drink had become outdated. It was the drink of grannies, grandpas which has now become a super chic drink. The brand and TF1 had the same goal: it was trying to rejuvenate its audience, which was going in part to M6.

A hit made possible by television

Sophian Fanen: “This acceleration of the phenomenon of hits in the late 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, is linked to the fact that music obtains the right to be advertised on television. The real revolution of ‘The Lambada’, it is the fact that televisions are themselves becoming music producers. The producers made the records, but the production of the music was generated by a television channel. Even today, television channels are powerful players in music”.

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