Stephen King played "Mambo No. 5" so much that his wife threatened to leave him
Guess Tabitha King really didn't want a little bit of Monica in her life
Look, writing can be a lonely, isolating process, but that’s no excuse to torture your loved ones while you’re at it. If anyone should innately understand this it’s Stephen King, who wrote Misery about a (literally) tortured artist, not to mention all of the other horrific ordeals that characters have been forced to undergo by his hand. Actually, scratch that. There is a torture—and we really do mean torture—that could only have been born from the mind that orchestrated Jack Torrance’s descent into madness at the Overlook Hotel.
But this isn’t a story about killer clowns or undead tomcats. This is a story about attempting to brainwash your wife by playing Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5" ad nauseam, something Stephen King has apparently done for over a decade now. Seriously.
In a recent Rolling Stone interview, the Holly author shared the following delightful little tidbit about the state of his marriage. “I hear you’re a huge fan of ‘Mambo No. 5' by Lou Bega?” the interviewer asked, to which King answered:
Oh, yeah. Big time. My wife threatened to divorce me. I played that a lot. I had the dance mix. I loved those extended play things, and I played both sides of it. And one of them was just total instrumental. And I played that thing until my wife just said, “One more time, and I’m going to fucking leave you.”
Because we only want to bring you the most accurate reporting, this writer did a little experiment. After the second helping of a little bit of Rita, we can safely say that our hearts and full support go out to Stephen King’s wife Tabitha, who has obviously suffered in unimaginable ways. At least she lived in a warm, cozy, and totally not haunted house to while away the days while she recovered… oh wait… never mind!
But if brainwashing his beloved partner into becoming a Lou Bega stan is King’s ultimate goal, it sounds like he’s doing a very good job playing the long game. Threats of divorce from the love of your life are bad, sure, but not nearly as extreme as promises to “disembowel me with her sharpest Ginsu knife if I played the extended version [of “Mambo No. 5"] one more time,” which was a real thing Tabitha King apparently said to her husband back in 2009. We guess nursing a decades-long proclivity for a particularly annoying song is better than running rampant around an abandoned hotel with a rusty ax and a dream, but it’s a real nail-biter if we’re being honest.