Image courtesy of Nuestro Stories.
How our mamás would get mad at us for the “disturbing content” of the music we listened to on the radio — when they were bumping “Las Burbujas de Amor” de Juan Luis Guerra while cleaning the kitchen on Saturday morning — is beyond me. This song is, without a doubt, one of the weirdest songs to ever come out about love, sex, and the desire to be a fish.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I wrote, and it’s exactly what I meant.
The love that Juan Luis Guerra was singing about was so strong, powerful, and desperate that he spent the song wishing he was a fish to swim inside his lover’s… fish bowl.
He didn’t stop at swimming, though. No. He went on in the song to wish that he could turn into a fish so he could press his nose against his lover’s fishbowl. Wet, inside her fishbowl, forever, is where he longed to be.
While cleverly — if not poorly — disguised in metaphor, the song was an evident dedication to a particular part of Juan’s lover. It was a suggestive ballad that somehow blended extremely overt sexuality with a tongue-in-cheek storyline that made it safe to play on radio stations worldwide.
The bachata hit is still one of Guerra’s most well-known and well-loved songs, despite coming out over 30 years ago.
You can listen, sing, or swim along to Juan Luis Guerra’s Las Burbujas de Amor on most streaming platforms.
