At that time, autumn 1999, ‘Mambo n. 5’, by Lou Bega. “A little bit of Monica in my life / A little bit of Erica by my side…” David Muñoz remembers it very well. “I thought: ‘My mother, what a great song’…” And pieces from La Oreja by Van Gogh, Carlos Jean, Jennifer López… David and Jose had to deal with those ‘hits’ when they published the song that would precipitate the first wave of the ‘Estopa phenomenon’, that rumba called ‘La raja de tu skirt’, for the greater glory of the Sin Nombre bar (in Viladecans) and the Seat Panda.
It must be remembered that this was not the song chosen as the first single from Estopa’s debut album. Those honors went to ‘Suma y continua’, which came out as a preview, before the album’s publication, and which is about greed and in whose video clip David was seen parodying the power of banknotes in a slot machine parlor (“the money comes out, take it!”). “Record company things, they chose that as the single,” he explains.. “We thought it should be ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’ or ‘Your Hotness’, but they said: ‘No, that’s what everyone would do.’ Like when the plane crashes in ‘Land as you can’. So we thought: ‘well, they understand and that’s the best song. Although the best, obviously, was ‘La raja’. But ‘Add and continue’ was good. “She was fun.”
Fear in the body
When, shortly after, ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’ was placed in the promotional shoot, the Muñozes were relieved. “That’s it, thank goodness!” Behind them were a few critical weeks, in which David and Jose, with their adorable youthful fatalism, came to fear the worst. “I thought they weren’t going to publish the album,” he assures, and remembers the case of a neighbor of the recording studio. “She was a girl who sang very well, named Ana Valeiras. Her album never came out. She stayed in the drawer. We had that fear: ‘See? “Everything was too good to be true.” Jose nods. “We always had that fear that they would archive us and that we would have to return to the factory or our parents’ bar. “It was a resource that we developed in our thoughts for mental health.”
How did ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’ come about? David does not have any mystical-glorifying speech prepared on the matter, quite the contrary. “It was the result of boredom, just as many songs arise. You’re there with the guitar, you’re stringing chords together, searching, and something comes out,” he muses. Song in which the protagonist confesses to having suffered an accident with his utility vehicle when he lost his orientation due to the sight and unseen of some female thighs at the bus stop.
The lyrics started from a real episode, as fatal as it was crazy: the news that a guy had hit the fence of an ‘Intima cherry’ advertisement with his car. There, David and Jose argue about whether the photo was of Claudia Schiffer alone or with other top models. Naomi Campbell, Giselle Bündchen, Cindy Crawford…?, they are shuffling. “There were three,” says Jose, but his brother disagrees. “I think it was just from Schiffer, but what does it matter? The point is that The guy ‘sneak’ against the sign. Apparently, he was very packed. “I was amused by the news.”
Lots of lyrics for the radio
They shaped the composition by tracing a story like those cultivated by many of the artists they admired, in the orbit of rock and author songs. Because Estopa didn’t just live on rumba. “At that time we listened to songs with a lot of history, like those by Albert Pla, Sabina, La Polla Records, Kortatu…”, reveals David, who places another influence on “Tarantino’s films, like ‘Pulp fiction’.”
But the rise of ‘The Slit in Your Skirt’ did not happen overnight. Estopa’s songs did not conform to the canons of the radio formula, and it took a while to enter the game of traffic lights and rotations. Yes, he opted for Tele-Taxi from the beginning. Fair Miller, as they have always remembered. “The radio formula, to begin with, has always played lighter, softer music, without so many lyrics, that does not generate controversy…”, observes David. “And we arrived talking about crime, drugs and forbidden loves, and surely that didn’t add up much. But the luck we had was that The song reached the people and the radio stations noticed the demand to play us, so they had to program ‘La raja de tu skirt’, and ‘Tu calorro’, and all our garruladas.
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And they began to be seen on television, on those channels that broadcast video clips, Sol Música and 40 TV. “The first few times we were very excited when we saw ourselves on TV in a bar,” recalls David. “We called the waiter and told him: ‘Look, that’s me’.”