9 September 1994
Right after ‘Riverdance’, here’s more music from dancing. Just as the 1994 Eurovision winner was upstaged by the intermission floor show, the 1994 World Cup on Irish TV made its biggest cultural impact not through the football but with one of the half-time ads. For those of you who weren’t around in 1994, ‘Guaglione’ was the music from a wildly popular Guinness commercial where a guy throws funny shapes and faces while waiting for his pint to be double-poured and settled. (As well as being an ad, this could also serve as an instructional video for London bar staff.) I can’t overstate how huge a pre-Internet meme this was in the summer of 1994, and how soon it got overbearing. I remember that quite quickly it had delighted me enough. We will hear Perez Prado at number one in Ireland again in five chart-years from now, with someone else’s lyrics attached, but for now it’s this instrumental from the guy they call ‘Prez’.
Again as with ‘Riverdance’, how does ‘Guaglione’ fare as a stand-alone track? Jaunty mambo it may be, but it’s still an old-fashioned big-band number with some ’50s starch and reserve baked in, like how a hip young priest is still a conservative church enforcer. I think we project the ad’s goofiness, the brand’s marketing nous and our own sense of po-mo ironic kitsch onto it, which is a lot to be superimposing onto any music without obscuring it completely. I can’t dislike it, especially as it’s done and dusted in barely two minutes: here for a good time, not a long time. That said, for a number one single ‘Guaglione’ is as frothy and watery as those London pints. Enjoy responsibly.
