The summer songs start arriving in April. Every year, dozens of them turn up in the station inbox, all built for the same twelve weeks and all hoping to be the one you remember. Most are gone by the time the schools break up.

This one stuck. “Vamos de Fiesta” by Club Orange has been on the Chilli FM playlist all summer and it’s still there in August, which tells you something. Songs earn their place on a rotation or they quietly come off it, and this one has held on while most of April’s arrivals have long since gone.

So I went and read up on them, and it turns out the story behind it is as good as the record.

Not a boyband

Club Orange are Ed, Albert, Kevin and Peter. Four friends who’ve known each other most of their lives, and, this is the bit, four men who’d each built a proper career as an entrepreneur before any of this started. Successful ones. The sort you don’t walk out of on a whim.

They walked out anyway.

They’re touchy about the word boyband, and fair enough, because look at them. They use “manband” instead, which made me laugh the first time I read it and then made me think about it for longer than I meant to. Because starting a band is a thing you’re supposed to do when you’re twenty and skint and it doesn’t cost you anything to fail. Doing it once you’ve got something to lose is a different proposition entirely.

I imagine that lands for a few people reading this. Half the Costa is made up of people who looked at a perfectly good life somewhere colder and decided it wasn’t the one.

They actually live here, which you can hear

The thing that separates this from the usual summer-Spanish-pop production line is that they’re not tourists in the sound.

The band members have spent years in Spain and still live here part of the year, and rather than sticking a Spanish phrase in the chorus and calling it done, they went and recorded a full Spanish-language version of the song alongside the English one. Complete version. Not a remix with a couple of words swapped.

They also brought in Noël Pastor, Baby Noel, if you follow Spanish pop, to work on the newer material. He’s got multiple triple-platinum and gold records behind him and three Latin Grammy nominations, and producers at that level don’t take on projects to be polite about it.

There’s a label as well. They set up Son Arte with Rose Spearman of MARS Worldwide, the idea being to back artists with a Spanish heart and get them heard outside Spain. So this isn’t four mates messing about for a season. Somebody’s got a plan.

The video for “Vamos de Fiesta” was shot up in Denia on the Costa Blanca. Different coast to us, same light.

About the song

It’s a party record and it makes no apology for being one. Big chorus, party rhythm, three minutes and seven seconds of not thinking about anything.

That sounds like faint praise and it isn’t meant to be. Carefree is the hardest thing to fake in pop. Most attempts at it end up sounding like work, and you can hear the effort in every bar. The difference is nearly always whether the band are having a good time or performing having a good time, and you clock it instantly even if you couldn’t explain how. These four are having a good time. Their own tagline is “we’re gonna have some fun tonight,” and I believe them.

If it lands with you, “Dolce Vita” is the next one to try. “Baila Conmigo” and “You and Me” are both out too, and there’s older Dutch-language stuff in the back catalogue if you’re curious.

Go and have a listen

“Vamos de Fiesta” is out now, English or Spanish, whichever you prefer. They’re on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and their own site is cluborangemusic.com.

Or leave us on and wait. It won’t be long.