Гери Холливелл: «Mi Chico Latino» - Латын биі және табыс жолы

Geri Halliwell single

"Mi Chico Latino" (English: "My Latin Boy"), is a song by English singer Geri Halliwell for her debut solo album Schizophonic (1999). It was written by Halliwell, Andy Watkins and Paul Wilson, whilst produced by the latter two, who are known collectively as Absolute. "Mi Chico Latino" was released as the album's second single on 16 August 1999 by EMI Records. It is a Latin pop song that is centred on a lost love theme. The song was written by Halliwell in order to pay homage to her mother, who has Spanish background, whilst it also has a number of Spanish lyrics. "Mi Chico Latino" received mixed reviews from music critics, who noted it was a contribution to the Latin pop phenom at the time, while others criticized Halliwell's Spanish pronunciation. The song was a commercial success in the United Kingdom, debuting at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Halliwell's first number one solo single in the country. The song also attracted some moderate success worldwide. "Mi Chico Latino"'s accompanying music video was directed by Doug Nichol and filmed on the island of Sardinia. It depicts the singer wearing a black bikini and dancing with semi nude male dancers on a boat. In order to promote the single, Halliwell performed the song on Top of the Pops and Party in the Park in 1999.

"Mi Chico Latino" is a Latin pop song that moves at a moderate tempo of 104 beats per minute. At the beginning of the song, Halliwell chants the spoken word line "¿Dónde está el hombre con fuego en la sangre?" (which translates to Where is the man with fire in the blood? ).

In 1999 Ishtar, the Israeli lead singer of Alabina, said "Mi Chico Latino" was plagiarized from her song "Alabina (De La Noche A La Manana)", released the year before. A spokesman for Alabina's French record label Atal said that they were "anxiously contacting" Halliwell's record label about the songs' similarities. However, no legal actions were made. Chris Charles from BBC News commented that "Mi Chico Latino" could be mistaken with "Spice Up Your Life", Halliwell's previous hit with the Spice Girls. The Daily Vault's Christopher Thelen felt that it "is an odd selection for a single". Jonathan O'Brien from Hot Press magazine was negative, stating that "Mi Chico Latino" was "a dreadful pastiche of Madonna's 'La Isla Bonita'". For Russell Baillie from The New Zealand Herald, Halliwell spends time on the album "flashing her eyelashes at [menfolk], especially if they're foreign", calling the song "glutinous". According to Rolling Stone, "Mi Chico Latino" was her "impeccably timed contribution to the Latin pop phenom, complete with awkwardly pronounced Spanglish".

"Mi Chico Latino" was released in the United Kingdom on 16 August 1999 as two CD singles and a cassette single. The song debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart on 22 August 1999, selling 132,000 copies in its first week, becoming Halliwell's first number one solo single in the country. It also was the beginning of a sequence of four consecutive Halliwell singles reaching number one in the United Kingdom. It spent fifteen weeks in the charts, and went on to sell over 400,000 copies in the UK and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Halliwell wanted the video for the song to be very different in style to her previous single "Look at Me", as that one was filmed in Prague in the freezing cold, and she wanted something to connect with her fans. According to her, the video was also pretty easy to get: "a yacht, a girl in a bikini and some wicked boy dancers to keep both sets of fans [gay guys and teenage girls] happy". After the video was released, the singer got a huge amount of attention from it. "People came up to me and told me how great and how sexy it was. They also told me I looked really healthy, but how wrong they were. I wasn't healthy because I wasn't eating properly and although I was slim at the time, that was a mirage too because the tough regime of the diet was always going to lead me to binge and put the weight back on", and later, she began taking recovery meetings for bulimia. Halliwell also performed the single in front of 100,000 fans at Party in the Park event in early July 1999. On 26 August 1999, the singer performed the song on Top of the Pops. On 8 July 2001, whist promoting her second album Scream If You Wanna Go Faster, she performed the song again on Party in the Park.