Slain Tejano Singer Selena’s Album Tops Pop Chart
Selena’s “Dreaming of You,” a posthumous album by the slain Tejano superstar, has become the fastest-selling album by a female artist in pop history, with 175,000 copies purchased on the day of its release last Tuesday. The album’s first-week sales of 331,000 copies put its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, becoming the first album ever by a Latin artist to reach the top spot on the pop charts.
“Dreaming of You” was supposed to have been Selena’s first album in English, which was the second-generation Mexican-American’s first language. But when Selena, 23, was shot to death in March, allegedly by former employee Yolanda Saldivar, she had recorded only four tracks for the album. “Dreaming of You” had been envisioned as a first step in establishing Selena as a crossover act able to reach both the Anglo and Latin markets.
“It is the most bittersweet feeling imaginable,” says Jose Behar, president of EMI Latin, who signed Selena in 1989. “We - her family, myself and obviously Selena - had this dream since 1989, and we now see it coming to fruition. There’s this incredible celebration of Selena’s music, and she’s throwing the party, but she’s not going to be there.”
When Behar first signed Selena, he envisioned her as a crossover artist, particularly since the Tejano music scene was male-dominated. “I remember seeing her and getting very excited, though I knew female artists do not thrive in this (Tejano) market.” Tejano is a Texas-based sound that combines German polkas with the conjuntos and boleros of Mexico.
“But I also realized Selena is bicultural, that needle in a haystack that we’re looking for,” Behar adds, “… to be able to identify with the Anglo masses as well as the Hispanic masses, but just as importantly, to have the Anglos identify with you as a performer. Selena possessed those qualities.”
That crossover dream, shared by Selena, was derailed when her recordings quickly established her as a rising, then reigning, star in the Latin market (with three No. 1 albums and six No. 1 singles). She also became one of Latin music’s most successful touring acts, drawing 61,000 fans to the Houston Astrodome in January.
“It’s almost like the English thing had to go to the back burner, simply because we felt we should solidify her presence in the Latin market,” says Behar. “And once we did that, we didn’t want her Latin fans to feel like we were abandoning them for an English music career. So we were moving ahead cautiously rather than impulsively.” The earlier dual-language successes of Jon Secada and Gloria Estefan clearly helped open that particular option again.
Though Selena was well known in the Southwest, much of the country had not heard of her until her killing and the ensuing public grief of her fans. Those fans snapped up every Selena album (this week five of them occupied the top seven spots in Billboard’s Latin charts).
People magazine published its third commemorative special in her honor.
Within a month there was a biography, “Selena: The Phenomenal Life and Tragic Death of the Tejano Music Queen,” with text in both Spanish and English. And a film biography is being planned.