I had to start this new section of my music site with Enrique Bunbury. Partly because I just like the projects he embarks on. Also for being from my native Zaragoza. And thirdly because with him everything is discovery in a natural process of vital and creative evolution.
If being an artist is a commitment to what you do and what you want to be, beyond markets and fleeting tastes for a catchy refrain, then without a doubt Bunbury is one of the most authentic you can find (in Spain along with Joaquín Sabina, Leiva and little else).
The successes and failures are for those who seek the rapid conquest of their market niche. Everything else, everything Bunbury does is just exploration. The great advantage is then the delivery solely and exclusively to creativity. Whoever likes it likes it. Although, of course, always looking for more and more people to like it. An auditory conquest that may not always reach the first audition but that ends up giving more weight to the music, when the easy chorus is erased never to return and the essence of good music remains.
As always for haters, offended, purists and others, it is a subjective selection. Based, yes, on an exhaustive audition of the work of the inexhaustible Bunbury...
Top 10 songs by Enrique Bunbury
Of all the world
A perfect ballad that Raphael discarded for his repertoire. And the truth is that it is one of the greatest emblems of Bunbury. As a faithful reflection of the soul of the musician (not of any musician but of the one that Enrique represents and the constant search for him) and as a remote longing of every human spirit in search of the most transcendent life adventure.
lady blue
Mixture of synthesizers and guitars reminiscent of Bowie in substance and form. Because if Bowie screamed with his Starman, Bunbury did the same with his melancholic man aboard the last ship to leave this blue planet.
the right spark
That ballad brought from heroic times and that continues to sound as timely as ever. He wanted to have selected only solo Bunbury songs. But it is impossible not to mention this most baladero rock masterpiece. The search for that spark that lights everything.
because things change
For this reason, new challenges are sought and we move towards new horizons. Because things change and cannot invite more than a necessary optimism torn from all past nostalgia. Overcoming sorrows and, despite the melancholic beauty that Johnny Cash sang in his «Hurt«As a theme parallel to this, growing up has to be funny.
Abroad
The foreigner learns doubly because he gets rid of the habitual ethnocentrism while dressing in the new customs. No tourism, just the trip stripped of forecasts and studied routes. Something that Bunbury already learned from Héroes del Silencio. From his traveling soul comes this song with airs of the Mediterranean capable of moving us around the world like Ulysses on impossible journeys.
Infinite
Love and heartbreak are the same. At least when they are sung in a mythical ballad like this one finished with hypnotic sounds towards the most romantic plot development. Love defeated by wear and tear sung as the lost opportunity, as the story that will no longer be and even the doom of canteens and death, if it comes, as the only way to rebuild the lost path towards that infinity.
Alice
When you listen to Bunbury talk about his "Radical Sonora" it doesn't seem like it's the most valued album by its own author. But this bastard son has explosive themes, breakers between electronics and the search for sounds from here and there.
And Alicia was the emblem of that album with which Bunbury undid his world and rebuilt himself from the rubble, with his noise as an accurate shrill towards all kinds of sounds in exploration.
The rescue
Each one chooses who can pay their ransom. Only not everyone is willing to take on at what price. Between resilience and self-sacrifice, the kind hands that pick up the remains of what we were end up paying what we are worth when everything is back.
Prisoners
Sometimes brilliance flashes from the simple. A composition for lonely guitar and tender hearts. Of course with a touch of romanticism beyond what romanticism means today in the hands of musical styles that destroy everything. A small composition with that screeching of the guitar strings like nails clinging to the soul.
I suppose
The best song on an album "Expectations" that has many magical moments. The typical album in which you introduce yourself to each new listening, discovering strictly musical nuances that at the same time touch new emotions.