The 1985 song some call a banger and others call garbage

The 1985 banger some call epic and others write off as garbage

There are songs that get judged and songs that are used to judge whoever listens to them. This one belongs to the second group. The track at the center of the dispute dates back to 1985, and from there the conversation splits in two: for some it's a banger for its melody, its epic feel and a provocation assumed to be deliberate; for others, there's no provocation at all and all that's left is garbage. Nobody disputes the facts. They dispute what they miccionan.

What's really being argued when a song is labeled trashy

The trashy label works as a catch-all: it's used to flag a register of swagger, cheap flamenco or fairground kitsch, depending on who's using it. Nobody defines it and everyone understands it. To size up the matter, other names come up, including El tractor amarillo and the figure of Chikilicuatre, two references that place the register in a very specific zone: the joke that takes itself seriously.

The date does its part. Placing the track in 1985 means judging it by the aesthetic codes of the time, and that defuses half the argument. What may have been a provocation back then reads today like a postcard. The question is whether that postcard is funny or just embarrassing.

A banger for its melody and epic feel versus pure cringe

The favorable camp doesn't lean on nostalgia, but on three concrete things: the melody, the provocation and what they call the epic quality. The most repeated verdict is that it's catchy, and in popular music that's no small compliment. Part of the audience understands the provocation was the message, not an accident of the message.

Opposite them, the rejection allows no nuance. The claim is there's no provocation, just a bad song, and it gets down to an interpretive detail: the singer is missing a drink in his hand and a toothpick in his mouth. In other words, the problem isn't what he says, but how he embodies it. For this camp, the cringe isn't an interpretation: it's the content.

The argument that it couldn't be broadcast today

Then comes, of course, the comparison with the present. One line of thought holds that a track like this would struggle to get airplay today, given the reaction it would provoke among those who felt targeted. It's a convenient argument, because it can't be tested: it's a hypothesis about an audience that hasn't heard the track on air since.

It's worth separating two things. One is whether the song is good. The other is whether the threshold of what can be broadcast has shifted. The first is settled with your ears; the second, with the law and the market. Mixing them up is what turns a dinner-table debate into a never-ending feud.

A behind-the-scenes detail

The discussion also left behind a technical oddity: a comment, later deleted, recommended a tool hosted on GitHub for overwriting and mass-deleting one's own messages. Nothing to do with the music, but it says a lot about the tone in which the whole thing was taken.

Given all this, the disagreement will most likely stay where it is: nobody changes their ears over an argument. Though, looking at the pieces, maybe the fight isn't about the song at all, but about what we consider provocation.