tumbledry

Why Wikipedia is Amazing

On the local classic rock station, I heard a song by Carlos Santana today; luckily, I thought I had it in my iTunes library. Headed home, checked, and there it was: “Oye Como Va” from the Best of Santana album. Naturally, I wanted to learn a little more about the guy … I knew he had been around a while and experienced a resurgence in the 90’s. I didn’t realize that his album Supernatural was essentially all collaborations, and pretty good ones, too.

Thus began my journey through useless yet interesting trivia. Starting from Santana’s Wikipedia page, I linked on over to a list of music artists who have sold over 250 million copies. Shocked to see ABBA on there, I continued down the list. What’s this? Some guy named Julio Iglesias, right there by Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and etc. Turns out this Julio fellow is the most popular song’ster in his native Spain, but before his musical career he played soccer for Real Madrid, which is considered “The 20th Century’s Best Club” by FIFA. Take a minute to think about that. This guy was a professional soccer player, but after he suffered debilitating spinal injury in a car accident, decided to pick up guitar and became a smash hit at that. Who in the world can honestly claim such undisputed success in two wildly different categories of human activity? Finally, his son is Enrique Iglesias; I thought that name sounded familiar.

So much information, and in only 5 minutes.

6 comments left

Comments

Richard Roche

did you know oye como va is a cover of a tito puente song? tito puente is the man yo. nice to see you expanding your horizons in the hispanic music culture realm. also, this might sound like a joke, but seriously, ABBA is highly underrated. yeah they have cheesy/poppy choruses in their songs, but if you listen to the verses objectively, they are really dark and beautiful and artistic in a way. (eg. SOS, and Fernando)

Nils

ABBA is also Swedish, which is almost Norwegian, which is the best culture in the world. So they have that going for them too.

Alexander Micek

You guys are just as, if not more, englightening than Wikipedia. I didn't know those things about ABBA or "Oye Coma Va." Also, the only song even close to ABBA I have in my library is by "Abba Teens" - it's called "Mama Mia (Dance Mix)" and it's darn good (if not embarassing - I got it in February of 2001). Right …

So I'll have to give the real ABBA a try sometime. Plus, they had great graphic designers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abbamovieposter.jpg

Caley

So I don't know if this is enlightening but I'm going to a Real Madrid game this semester! Does that count for anything?

Nils

Nope, that counts for nothing Caley. Now going to a World Cup game in Berlin in the summer of 2006 with your brother, that would count for something. Some of us cough me cough cough just care a little more I guess.

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