Selena - Dreaming of You

At least we have some variety with this project

The previous albums on this project have led me to the conclusion that there’s (probably) no such thing as music that’s actually interesting. This fact appears to be doubly true for the year of my birth, Anno Domini 1995. With that in mind, I’ve gone for a slightly different strategy and chosen an album which hopefully makes up in interesting context what it lacks in interesting content: Dreaming of You, the fifth and final album by Mexican-American singer Selena.

So, what is the context? Well, here are a few fun facts that at least make this album a significant one. It was the first majority Spanish language album to debut at the top of the Billboard 200, selling 175,000 copies on its first day (at the time a record for a female vocalist). It has generally been credited with introducing American audiences to Latin (particularly Tejano) music and has gone on to become the best-selling Latin album of all time in the US.

But Dreaming of You is most notable for its tragic backstory. Planned to be Selena’s first foray into English language music, the 23 year old had only managed to record four new songs before she was murdered by Yolanda Saldívar, the former president of her fan club and manager of her clothing boutiques, who had recently been fired for embezzling money from both. Because of its unfinished state, the album was filled out with a mixture of released and unreleased music that had been recorded in the preceding years. These circumstances probably contributed to the somewhat disjointed nature of the album, which is split into two distinct halves. The first half, featuring predominantly English lyrics, mixes sappy pop ballads with R&B tunes intended to appeal to a mainstream American audience. Unfortunately, the outcome is mostly fairly tepid despite flashes of personality (such as the funky basslines on second track “Captive Heart”). Things improve a bit from “Amor Prohibido” onwards, as the album switches to mostly Spanish lyrics and leans harder on Selena’s Tejano roots. This results in a more upbeat fusion of Mexican and wider influences, including a rendition of the popular mariachi song “El Toro Relajo” and even a touch of reggae on closer “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom”.

I wasn’t familiar with the Queen of Tejano Music’s work prior to selecting this album for the Birthtopster, and while I wasn’t exactly blown away by the songs on display here, you can’t deny this album’s important place in the history of Latin music and popular music in general over the last 30 years. It’s even indirectly responsible for launching the career of Jennifer Lopez, who played the title role in the 1997 biopic about Selena’s life. Sadly we’ll never get to see where her career might have gone following the success of Dreaming of You, although judging by the direction this album seemed to be taking before she died, I probably wouldn’t have have found it particularly exciting.