The power of TikTok can not only break new artists but revive older hits, as Fleetwood Mac and Kate Bush can attest. And as a global platform, a song’s popularity can easily jump borders, bringing with it an international audience who are just discovering a song or artist for the first time.
Thalia, the reigning queen of Latin pop, is the latest industry veteran to find herself the subject of a viral TikTok trend thanks to her 1994 salsa single “Marimar,” which has over 903K total TikTok creations.
The song took off after it was featured in a popular prank, as creators pretended they were performing a dance with their siblings, partners, or family members, before pulling their hair in tandem with Thalia’s high-pitched yelp.
The singer, actress, and social-media savvy-mogul is no stranger to the app, with over 10.9 million followers of her own, and has recorded duets with many of the “Marimar” videos that creators have made.
While many of these young creators are just discovering Thalia for the first time, she remains one of the bestselling Latin music artists of all time. With five decades of hits under her belt, and 25 million records sold worldwide, she has more than earned her single-name status.
The former child prodigy (whose real name is Ariadne Sodi Miranda) has always been in the public eye. She first rose to fame in Mexico and Latin America as a member of the teen pop supergroup Timbiriche in the 80s (the Latin answer to the Mickey Mouse Club) which also launched the career of Paulina Rubio, among others.
In 1990, she broke out with her first self-titled solo album and continued to dominate the decade with her Latin pop anthems, “Piel Morena” in 1995 and “Amor a la Mexicana” in 1997, before pivoting to the small screen to become the “Queen of Telenovelas.
Thanks to her leading roles in wildly popular Mexican soap operas like María la del Barrio, María Mercedes, and Marimar which were broadcast in more than 180 countries, Thalia became a household name everywhere from Japan to the Philippines.
The official “Marimar” video features a very fresh-faced Thalia looking like Rita Hayworth in a bustier dress and passionately singing in front of some very 90s-background sets, intercut with scenes from the show, which first premiered in 1994.
“Marimar, oh!, I come from the coast,” she sings.
Like every classic telenovela (or any soap, really), Marimar tells the story of a young, poor, pure-hearted woman who resides in a small beach town and falls in love with a rich man. Later, his disapproving relatives wreak havoc on her family while they try to break them up. Described as a “blizzard of love, sex and betrayal, poverty and sudden wealth, revenge and triumph. And a talking dog,” by the New York Times, the show was truly a global phenomenon and helped cement Thalia as an international star.
After the track blew up on TikTok, Thalia recreated her dance moves from the original video for TikTok, proving she still had the moves almost 30 years later.