DM Blog

Vaby, Vaby, Vaby, Oh!

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I joke around with Michelle all the time about Latinizing cheesy anglophone pop songs by turning them into cumbia tunes. You can imagine my surprise then, when a friend sent me a link to this YouTube video of Justin Bieber’s Baby already done in cumbia:

Tongo — Baby

Seriously, I can’t stop laughing whenever I hear it!

As I listened to it for the first time a couple evenings ago, Michelle texted me from the other room, "What the heck are you listening to?!":

iMessages Text conversation

I eventually made my way over to the other room. She looked at me with a face of extreme disgust as if I had just taken a dump in my pants or something, while she asked me again "Seriously, what are you listening to?" to which I responded with a straight face, "…[he] wants to play this song, so I’m going to do the charts!", at which point her face turned from a look of disgust to a look of complete mortification!

When she realized I was only kidding, I was able to get her to come take a look at the video. And we quickly discovered, that wasn’t even the best part! Below the video were the "lyrics" – I’ve also pasted Justin Bieber’s original lyrics (truncated) so you can compare:

woooouuu waaaaaaa ajaaaa [3x]

yu nou yu lof mi, ai nou yu lof jeer
chow chow ve never, an tin da baaaf
yu wan mai lof, yu wan my jaar
an wiwi never ever ever vi a par
ar wi an antin, de bu e penjin
wi jancin, wandu sanjin
satutu ai nou yulu mais
ai fato fandou farun fers tai
an ai was lai

beibi beibi beibi uuuuuhh laaar
beibi beibi beibi uuuuuhh laaar
beibi beibi beibi uuuuuhh laaar
ai cul yu mai vi mai maaai

Oh whoa [3x]

You know you love me, I know you care
Just shout whenever, and I’ll be there
You are my love, you are my heart
And we will never ever ever be apart
Are we an item? Girl, quit playing
We’re just friends, what are you saying?
Say there’s another and look right in my eyes
My first love broke my heart for the first time
And I was like…

Baby, baby, baby oooh
Like baby, baby, baby nooo
Like baby, baby, baby oooh
I thought you’d always be mine

We read through the lyrics out loud with a Spanish accent and couldn’t stop laughing. "yu nou yu lof mi, ai nou yu lof jeer" And I guess it isn’t vaby in Spanish like I’ve been saying all these years, but beibi. Too much fun!

And if that wasn’t enough already, my friend then sent me another video of the song. This time, it was being performed (by the same artist) on Peruvian national TV:

Tongo Bieber — Baby

Watching the people in the audience eating it up, singing along and having the time of their lives, I’ll admit it was a little sad, but mostly funny. But the best part of that video has to be the dancing and choreography… We laughed harder than we have in a very long time! Wow.