Album: Loco (2001)
Charted: 5
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Songfacts®:

  • This Spanglish track from Fun Lovin' Criminals finds lead singer Huey Morgan just loco for a sweet señorita. Morgan is half Irish and half Puerto Rican, with varied musical tastes. His Puerto Rican is on display here.
  • The band was looking for some Santana-like sabor on this Latin-infused track. Huey Morgan is a huge Santana fan and spent a lot of time listening to the Abraxas album. Like Carlos Santana, Morgan is also a guitarist.

    "Carlos Santana was the guy – he played a Les Paul through a Marshall," Morgan told Jon Kutner. On 'Loco' I played a '59 Les Paul junior that I bought, which is a fat guitar and I put it through a Tech 21 going through a Fender Pro."
  • Fun Lovin' Criminals were formed in New York City and came up with a look and sound based on Mafiosos and the movies that celebrated them (The Godfather, Goodfellas...). When they released their first album, Come Find Yourself, in 1996, they had a hit with "Scooby Snacks" but had a hard time finding an audience in their home country. In Europe they did much better, especially in the UK where they had a string of hits. "Loco" is the title track to their third album of original songs. It became their biggest UK hit, reaching #5, but as usual, is got little attention in America.
  • The Santana-like guitar lick is actually interpolated from the 1977 song "Happy Anniversary" by the Little River Band.
  • The "wepa" in "wepa loco" is a Puerto Rican phrase used to punctuate a saying, so it's really crazy.
  • Fun Lovin' Criminals play "Loco" in a commercial for Miller beer that ran in parts of Europe in 2001. In the spot, but band is on the way to a gig but stuck in a traffic jam. They make the most of it by declaring "Miller Time" and doing an impromptu performance, enjoying some beers as they play.

    The commercial has a major flaw: People are seen drinking, but will need to drive away once the traffic clears - not a good look.
  • The Miller commercial was shot in Sydney, Australia, because there was strike in America that shut down a lot of production. The band used the opportunity to make the video for the song there as well, since they were already in Sydney on Miller's dime. In a Songfacts interview with Fun Lovin' Criminals founder Fast Leiser, he told the story:

    "While we were there we did the music video for 'Loco' on a boat. This is late '90s, early 2000s when Puffy, Bad Boy, he was putting out his videos for Biggie, like 'Hypnotize,' which is on the boat in Miami. We were doing our stripped-down-budget version of that, not on a big yacht, but a yacht. And they're not the best-looking strippers in the world, but they did their purpose.

    So we did our video like that, but I think our fans always knew we did it with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. We were on a budget, and basically, Miller paid for that video."
  • The Fun Lovin' Criminals often made their music videos into little vignettes, incorporating dialogue and story. For "Loco," they play a somewhat incompetent band of undercover operators who are sent to Sydney to stop a group of thieves, also played by the band. But it's really just pretense to have the guys on a boat with a bunch of girls in bikinis.

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