La Bomba by Los Bitchos
La Bomba is a burst of energy and power. The beginning stabs are what came to me (Serra) first as i was cooking in my kitchen. There’s something quite heroic and powerful about the opening guitar tone and the stabs underneath them. The twangy guitar tone cuts through the chaotic landscape of claps, pumping disco bass line and dreamy swirling synth sounds. Structurally the song delivers straight into a chorus (as Nile Rogers said, why wait), We wanted to keep this as close to a classic pop structure as possible, everything straight to the point. The disco era influence is quite evident in this song, and I think the bass line sets the tone perfectly for this, i’m a big fan of the octave bass grooves and I love how it carries the simpler guitar melodies in the verses and then sits on that octave groove in the pre-chorus. Josefine added in some epic finger picking and popping which gives it such a drive, think Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man after midnight) vibes, which is a huge influence for this song. The drums give a straight disco beat for most of the song which keeps it really grounded and groovy, and I love when Nic changes it up on the second verse with a new syncopated beat that gives the most delicious turn around before going straight back into the foundation groove which we can never help but dance to on stage every time we come back to it. By the time we get to the Hey Hey Hey middle 8 we are really feeling it! And of course I love how the synth lines provide such a sweetness and shimmer throughout, Agustina has her moment at the end of the song with her surprise solo moment, just when you thought you had heard it all! The cherry on top of this track are the little ping pong drum sounds (think ring My Bell, Anita Ward), they just make the track go off and totally emulate the feelings of euphoria and pure energy running through La bomba.
This is one of the songs on the album that came together the fastest when we started working with demos in rehearsals. We all wanted to keep playing it over and over - it’s just such a fun song. We started playing it at festivals last summer and the energy felt so good!
The song lent itself to quite a fast paced, chopping and changing video, to go with that four to the floor kick drum. It’s just a high energy, pumping song, we needed to have really dynamic visuals to go with that. The video moves between performance and surreal segments. We wanted lots of shiny, glitterball moments. We had so much fun with make-up and styling for this video. The visuals really bring the song to life. Josefine saw this thing on tik tok where you film in a way which gives the illusion you’re riding a horse, so obviously we had a go and put that in the video last minute on set.
4 gals from the underground realms of London