Stephen King's Marriage Nearly Collapsed After His Wife's Ultimatum — For One Unexpected Reason
Stephen King’s Mambo No. 5 obsession nearly wrecked his marriage: the It author admits he blasted Lou Bega’s hit on repeat—dance mix and all—until Tabitha King threatened divorce.
Stephen King almost turned his home into a true-crime podcast thanks to Lou Bega. In a recent Rolling Stone chat, the horror legend admitted he ran 'Mambo No. 5' on such an endless loop that his wife, Tabitha, finally issued the kind of warning that would scare Pennywise.
The 'Mambo No. 5' problem
King says he got hooked on the 'dance mix' and all the extended versions of 'Mambo No. 5' back in the day. He would flip through versions, including an instrumental side, and just keep going. It was a full-on loop-a-thon.
'One more time, and I’m going to f*cking leave you.'
That was Tabitha drawing the line. Message received. The Kings are still together, over 52 years strong now, with three kids.
Stephen and Tabitha: the long game
They met as students at the University of Maine while working at the campus library. They married in 1971. He took a job teaching English; she worked a second shift at Dunkin' Donuts so he could have evenings free to write.
Tabitha always pushed him to finish what he started. She even carved a tiny office out of their laundry room, parking a desk and her Olivetti portable between the washer and dryer. When he was ready to toss drafts, she pulled them out of the trash and told him to keep going. He calls her 'Tabby,' and that support never wavered. It paid off: Stephen King has sold hundreds of millions of books, and Tabitha is an author in her own right, with poetry and eight novels to her name, including 'Small World' and 'Pearl.' She has openly said his fame helped her get published after years spent backing his career.
What King listens to when he writes
When he is in writing mode, King leans hard into dance floors and drum machines: techno and disco. He name-checked LCD Soundsystem and Fatboy Slim as go-tos, and he is just as happy with KC and the Sunshine Band or Gloria Gaynor.
As for all-time favorites spotlighted elsewhere, his taste pinballs from classic rock to punk to pop to Springsteen deep cuts:
- Stiff Upper Lip - AC/DC
- She Loves You - The Beatles
- Anarchy in the U.K. - Sex Pistols
- Ramrod - Bruce Springsteen
- Pon de Replay - Rihanna
- Desolation Row - Bob Dylan
On music snobbery (and Bee Gees hypotheticals)
King says he has sparred with the rock-purist crowd about his playlists, but he is not losing sleep over it. In classic King deadpan, he joked that if people want to dunk on his taste, he will just 'cry hot tears of shame' into his pillow and move on. He even said that given the time, he would have tossed a Bee Gees disco track into the mix too.
Bottom line: the man loves music, the man loves his wife, and he has learned not to weaponize a track by playing it 300 times in a row. Probably for the best. Mambo can stay on the party playlist, not on repeat in the King household.