“It did just OK,” Rogelio Macin, West Coast sales and marketing director of BMG Latin, says of the record’s original impact. The song started off slowly in the United States when first released in the original Spanish version as part of Los del Rio’s “A mi me gusta” (I Like It) album in the fall of 1994. “The original ‘Macarena’ had many children, but they’re all ‘Macarena’ and we love them equally,” says Romero, who was born and raised in the industrial town of Dos Heranas, Seville, just as childhood friend and partner Ruiz was. Estimated sales of various versions of the song total more than 5 million worldwide. Its popularity then spread to the rest of the Latin pop world and beyond-from Germany to Lebanon. Los del Rio’s original version of “Macarena” was released in Spain three years ago and quickly went to No. Thanks to a special remix version by a Miami-based team known as the Bayside Boys, the single has sold more than 1.4 million copies in this country, according to SoundScan, and spawned one of the hottest Latin dance crazes since the lambada. The song that Romero began writing that night in his hotel room-and named after his daughter-is now in its third week at No. women’s gymnastics team danced the Macarena during a post-competition exhibition. At the Olympics, the gold medal-winning U.S. sales charts this week, has become so ingrained in the culture that it is now a between-innings staple at major league baseball stadiums across the nation. “Macarena,” which celebrates its 52nd week on the U.S. (“Replace Dole’s acceptance speech with lyrics to ‘Macarena.’ ”) Little did Antonio Romero Monge realize when he saw a sexy dancer at a party in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1993 that he’d just stumbled across the inspiration for a song so irresistible that it would eventually have the world dancing and be included among David Letterman’s top 10 ways for President Clinton to sabotage the Republican National Convention.
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