Baccara

Baccara's mix of disco, pop, and European club music was wildly popular during the late-1970s, when the Spanish duo scored one of the era's bestselling singles with "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie." Singers Mayte Mateos and María Mendiola had previously worked together as ballet dancers, before leaving the troupe and forming a song-and-dance duo. While performing in the Canary Islands in 1977, they were spotted by an RCA executive and signed to a record contract. Their self-titled debut, Baccara, was released that same year. The album's lead single, "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie," climbed to Number 1 in nearly a dozen countries and eventually sold more than 15 million copies, while the follow-up single "Sorry, I'm a Lady" topped the charts in Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. Baccara released a second album, Light My Fire, and participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1978, although the group's popularity had dwindled significantly by the time Colours appeared in 1979. After releasing Bad Boys in 1981, the group's original lineup parted ways, with Mateos and Mendiola both leading their own versions of Baccara throughout the following decades. More than 40 years after its original release, "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" unexpectedly returned to the UK Top 40 in November 2020, having been turned into a victory song by Scotland's soccer team. The song reached Number 11 on the Official Singles Sales Chart Top 100 that year. It proved to be Maria Mendiola's final time on the European charts, as the singer passed away in Madrid, Spain, on September 11, 2021, at the age of 69.