The Gipsy Kings are bamboleo-ing their way back onto the charts…
The flamenco, salsa and pop musicians have seen their iconic song “Bamboleo” get a new lease on life, thanks to the animated film Sing.
Sales of the Gipsy Kings’ 30-year-old worldwide hit, which was released in 1987, spiked 165% in the week ending December 29, with the song re-entering the digital sales chart this week at number 23.
“You can’t just sing,” the Lycra-clad German-accented pig Gunter (Nick Kroll) tells his porcine singing partner Rosita, a desperate housewife voiced by Reese Witherspoon, in the jubilent music-filled movie about a scrappy singing competition. “You’ve got to show the fire and desire.”
Rosita’s “aha” moment arrives when she hears “Bamboleo” in the supermarket and breaks into a full-on ballroom flamenco routine in the aisles, making maracas out of salt and pepper shakers and leaping over piles of produce.
In December, Olympic gold medalist and Dancing with the Stars champion Laurie Hernandez recreated the scene in a real-life grocery store.
“Bamboleo,” first heard as the opening track of the Gipsy Kings’ self-titled album in 1988, was the group’s debut chart hit, reaching the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs in early 1989, and spending 23 total weeks on the chart. To date, the track has sold 248,000 downloads, according to Nieslen Music.
For the week ending Dec. 22, just after Sing’s release in theaters, “Bamboleo” was up 59 percent in streams to 154,000 weekly U.S. streams.
