Lou Bega Doesn't Mind If You Illegally Download His Music

Where, you must be pleading, have I — and my irresistibly catchy songs — been the last 10 years? Where indeed, amigos! The life of the mariachi is a life of mystery, a life of surprise, a life defaulted bank loans. One sunrise you are drinking Bacardi from the gold-plated megaphone of a Latin Grammy with Enrique Iglesias, the next you’re being kicked out of a Delaware Pizza Hut for hanging flyers for your next performance in the doorway. Aye! What some star-struck policemen will do in the presence of a legend. (All is forgiven, officer. My anger, like the bruising, has already faded.)

But no longer can I stand by as the banditos at BNG Records keep my fans from the Spanish charms and sexual beats of Lou Bega they CRAVE. So many nights I laid on my air mattress, wondering if perhaps my blaring, incessant musical style had driven my listeners from me. Or if the unrelenting radio-play of “Mambo No. 5” was behind the mysterious decline of my popularity. Now I see the truth, that the honchos of the music industry care more about money than they do giving Americans the opportunity to listen to my newest jazz-meets-cha-cha musical fusions. No more, I say! Give the people what they want: More Lou Bega!

I do not ride solo in my Zorro-like defense of downloading. Just last week I was eating lunch with the great American mariachis of O-Town in-between our nine daily performances at Six Flags Great Adventure’s “Pop Music Spectacular and Batman Thrill Show.” As they removed their Tasmanian Devil masks, the band proudly declared they’d love to see every boy and girl in the COUNTRY listening to “Liquid Dreams” again, regardless of how they got it. So anxious were they to support the cause of downloading, in fact, that they slid me a stack of their mp3s on self-burned CD-ROMs, and begged me to “put them into cyberspace, or whatever.” That, my friends, is true dedication to the fans. To the art. To the PASSION!

So pick up your keyboards, hermanos, as Zapata picked up his rifle, and download “Mambo No. 5” with pride. Share it with your friends, and tell them to share it with their friends, until the name Lou Bega is in the ears of every American once again! I, unlike the forgotten, money-hungry “musicians” of U2 and Metallica, am not possessive of my creations.