60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Selena—“Dreaming of You”

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Rob explores Tejano superstar Selena’s posthumous crossover hit “Dreaming of You” by discussing her success in both Spanish-language and English-language music as well as the monumental legacy she left behind for Latinx artists. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Suzy Exposito Producers: Isaac Lee and Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to a music and talk episode where full songs and talk segments play together only on Spotify. Best of all, you can create your own music and talk show for free with Anchor Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started at anchor.fm-fm-f-M-C-H-O-R-F-M-U-S-I-S-I-C-A-N-D-T-A-L-K. A lot of spelling there, but just do it. It is very important to me. that you watch this video on YouTube of Selena, the DFI Tihano pop star,

just absolutely roasting this dude at home plate of a college baseball stadium in Midland, Texas in 1994. Selena is roasting this dude simply by singing her ballot, K. Creas, not so much to him as at him. Or really, she's singing through him. You watch this dude erode. You watch him evaporate. This is the best and also somehow the worst moment of this guy's entire life. because the second best moment of his life is now going to look so much worse by comparison. Kikrias translates as, What Did You Think? In the song, Selina informs an ex-boyfriend that despite his resurgent desire for her, he will in fact remain her ex-boyfriend. So beat it.

With assistance from some friends here at the ringer, I will further translate to the best of my ability. What did you think that you were going to come back? the dude is wearing a paisley shirt. It's quite dapper. He's at a Selena concert. He's brought his A-game. Selina is wearing a halter top and leather pants. She is right up in the paisley dude's face as the song begins. This is how Selena would usually perform K. Creas Live by pulling a gentleman volunteer from the crowd and making him stand there with his arms at his sides that the guy needed to be prompted to do that. Miles Chi obliterates him as a gracious stand-in for the dumb-ass gentleman who inspired the song. And that you would find me here, happy to receive you. Can a rolled R send you to the hospital on its own, the laser-focused intensity of someone rolling an R at you through you?

Just in case it can't. Selena also bends backward at that precise moment to the ground there in the left hand. batters box, one leg bent behind her, the other thrust forward. Anybody else this move will send you to the hospital if you try it, whether you're wearing whether pants or not. It's a signature, Selina move. This whole conceit, of course, is a gender-swapped version of the thing. Usually it's a studly R&B singer who pulls a lucky lady on stage and she sits in a chair while he serenades and or straddles her. Usher used to do this with trading places. Unfortunately, it's much safer for a male pop star to attempt this with a female fan than the reverse.

Fortunately, the Paisley shirt guy is too cowed, really, to even look in Selena's eyes. I don't want to hear from you so you can leave. And this is the moment when Selena winds up with her right arm and throws the guy out of the game, ejects him from the field of play, like a pissed off umpire. to that huge burst of applause you hear there. One time I was at an Erica Badu concert, and Erica was singing a really angry song, maybe it was Tyrone,

and she punctuated the song's angriest moment by ripping her giant Afro wig off her head and slamming it down on the stage. Like she was hurling a boulder. It bounced. Just, boing! It's the single most incredible, emphatic pop star gesture I have ever witnessed

at the hundreds, if not thousands of concerts I've attended, Selena as a pissed-off umpire is the second most incredible emphatic pop star gesture I've ever witnessed, and I wasn't even there. What did you think? What did you think? Selina is back in the dude's face, and for a split second, you see flashing across the dude's face the visible thought, oh, she might be flirting with me. She's into me. You know this face. Yeah, baby, this is happening. She wants me. I've got a real shot here. And Selena grabs a full handful of the dude's Paisley shirt. Like she's about to physically hurl him out of the stadium. At the very least, he'd land in the upper deck. That there were plenty like me, that my love was gifted. Well, now you see you were wrong.

Truly astounding how much cooler it well. Now you see you were wrong sounds in Spanish, or at least how much cooler it sounds. when Selena sings it. You can dive into a minor rabbit hole of Selena obliterating various dudes with Kay Creas. In 2018, there was a viral Twitter thread where a woman found photos of her uncle being obliterated by Selena.

Actually, at another venue in Midland, Texas, the year before in 93. The uncle is quite dapper as well. The dupier-looking the guy, the more satisfying, the obliteration in my experience. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s.

We are talking, Selena, we are talking Selena's Dreaming of You, which of course is late, Selena. It's English-speaking pop crossover, Selena. It's posthumous, Selena. It is a lovely song that I also find to be terribly sad

for the untapped global pop star potential you can hear in it. But it's also tragic to me that the only Selena song to ever crack the American Top 40 only begins to show American Top 40 listeners what Selena was capable of, and the singular radiance

Selena already exuded. I want to live in a world where K'Krieos made the top 40. Turns out there were not plenty like her. Turns out there was only one. All of which makes dreaming of you one of those heart-stopping songs where the meaning changed drastically

between when she sang it and when the wider world first heard it. We'll get there. I should tell you, I do not speak Spanish. I did not grow up on Selena's music, the way a Mexican-American living in Texas in the 20th century did. On this show, I try to approach every song with a healthy sense of what I know

and what I don't. That is extra important to keep in mind here. This time, I am not even trying to explain this person to you. My goal is simply to express my appreciation for this person and my fascination with the music industry's idea of how this person might have crossed over. A few quick recommendations for you on the explanatory side. There's a fantastic narrative podcast called Anything for Selena came out in early 2021, hosted by Maria Garcia. There are whole episodes devoted to Spanglish and Selena's relationship to race and toano music's relationship to regional Mexican music. There's a whole episode devoted to butts. Highly recommended. All of it. Elsewhere, you could add our friend Shea Serrano on Twitter about Selena, I assume. Shea appears, in fact,

on the Anything for Selena episode about butts, as if that episode somehow summoned him. You can check out the huge rad Texas monthly cover package about Selena in honor of what would have been on April 16, 2021, her 50th birthday. You can watch the Netflix series Selena the series debuted in late 2020, sitcom-esque, focused on her family and backing band, very twee and chill. It's Netflix, it's fine. Put it on and make dinner. The first season finale is largely about the song K. Creas. In fact, the actress who plays Selena, Christian Serranos, does the intense backwards. bend move, but does not do the pissed umpire move. Call it a draw. Or you could rewatch the Selena biopic,

1997, starring Jennifer Lopez, helped make Jennifer Lopez a star. Pretty much single-handedly made her want to be a pop star. The Selena biopic holds up. J-Lo is funny in this movie. She is hilarious. Fantastic delivery by J-Lo of the line, I Love Pizza in this movie. You think I'm joking. That's fine.

That's understandable. I am not joking. What? Are you going to eat that whole thing? Yes. Watch me. I can eat a whole medium pizza by myself. I love pizza.

I can see that. Egregious Oscar snub, J-Lo, not getting nominated for Selena. Okay. Selina Kintania is born in Lake Jackson, Texas on April 16, 1971. Her father, Abraham, first notices her enormous talent, her perfect pitch, but also her overpowering charisma when she is six years old. By the time she's 10 years old, she's leading the Tahaano band, Selina Ilos Dinos. Tihano, of course, being a Mexican-American style specific to Southern Texas. The band is managed by her lovable taskmaster father, and among others, features her sister Suzette on drums and her brother AB on bass.

AB got heavily into production and songwriting as well. By 1988, when Selena is still just 17 years old, Celina Ilos Dinos have already put out six albums on indie Tihano labels and won a small fleet of Tehano Music Awards. Vintage Selena YouTube in general is just a colossally rewarding experience. Please make some time for the band's performance of Damme Un Bezo. That's Give Me a Kiss, a very early original co-written by AB, at an outdoor show in Mexico in 1987.

Central to Selena's magic, even then, is that you can hear her outfit. The probably homemade, sparkly, silver spacesuit, the towering poof of hair that doubles the size of her head. You know what she looks like, even if you're not looking at her. It's all in your heart. Give me a kiss.

One thing the Spanish language has all over, the English language, is that corazon is a much better word for heart than heart. It is more romantic, it is more evocative. Selina is singing the word corazon, as she does in roughly 80% of her songs, is my version of Cellar Door. She signs to a major label, EMI Latin,

as a solo artist, albeit with Los Dinos as her backing band and the family business very much intact. Her first solo album, Selena, comes out in 1989, Track one is called Two Areas. You Are. And it ends like this. You are my heart. You are my heart. Every album Selena makes from this moment forward is a negotiation between Selena the established Tihano Star and Selena the future global pop star. When should she cross over? How should she cross over? When should she start singing in English? The biopic, the Netflix show, the podcast, there is a ton of excellent discourse on how Selena first learned Spanish by singing in Spanish. She often adorably bungled her conversational Spanish during interviews, but her father insisted that at the onset, at least, to make it, she had to sing in Spanish. She had to become

Selena the established Tahano star first. Selina, the human teenager, loved global pop stars. She loved Jody Watley and Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul, and yes, of course, Madonna. You can hear Selena's love for all of these women on Selena's albums immediately. But Selena's biggest and best songs are not working very hard to pander to American pop radio. The best song on Selena, the album, is Besitos. That's kisses. And it's built on the Coombia beat that she'll soon weaponize for even bigger and better songs. I need your kisses every night, every day. Tell me, love, that I am your happiness. Tell me, darling, that I am the owner of your heart.

But of course soon But of course soon they were calling Selena the Mexican Madonna, and that had a lot to do with her flamboyant fashion sense. Flamboyant by Tahano music standards, relatively chased by Madonna standards. And the most Madonna-esque song on the Selena album was called My Love, song in English, and co-written for the first time by Selena herself. and a love letter of sorts to American pop radio. Also a ton of Latin freestyle influence in this song,

Latin freestyle based mostly in New York City and a splendid influence on American pop radio in the late 80s and early 90s, Exposé, Sweet Sensation, Lisa Lisa, and Cult Jam, Debbie Gibson's Only in My Dreams is a freestyle jam, at least, all of which inspires Selena, but even at this early stage does not begin to define Selena. Back to that YouTube binge. Get a load of Selena performing My Love on TV in 1989. The all-black outfits, the Boustier, the rhinestones, the dance moves. Selena can moonwalk.

Selena's got better spin moves than Barry Sanders. You see clearly the influences. You see the individual parts. But you also already see, even more clearly, the whole of Selena, the singular global pop star, the one-of-one. part of my love is the outro hook. I live for a good sneak attack Selena outro hook. Of course, the mother of all sneak attack Selena outro hooks came on her next album, 1990s, Ven Comingo. That's come with me. Arguably, Selena's first monster hit is called Baila Esta Cumbia. Dance This Cumbia. The ghostly melody, she's floating over the top here, Dance This Cumbia with me. Move your waist. With Selena's idea, Selena's addition, and it totally makes a song that has already gone a long way toward making her truly famous.

The rest of the words, Dance, Dance This Cumbia. A rhythm, a rhythm like no other. No one stays seated. Everybody, let's dance. Abraham Kintanilla, Selena's father and manager, always made clear that he wanted Selena's albums to flaunt their variety, to hit on different styles, to stick and move,

to offer something for everybody, whether you wanted Selena to stay at Tihano Star, or you wanted Selena to morph into a global pop star. Ven Comingo, the song stuck to the Tejano side, but still represented a huge upgrade. The accordion on these self-titled albums sounded a little canned, but now they could afford to bring in a legit accordion player. You are my life, you are my everything.

Come with me. I want to make you my treasure. I want to give you what I keep in my heart. But the Mexican Madonna song in this album, though it's sung in Spanish this time, is called Ennamorada de T, meaning in love with you. A.B. Kintanilla later described this as his first true attempt at an R&B or a hip-hop sound. He fondly recalls being on the road and dragging eight keyboards and a ton of other gear into a tiny Motel 6 hotel room to get this song made. This song features Selena's single greatest delivery of the word Corazon, in my opinion. She also raps on this song, just straight up raps.

Should I, do you want me to translate the rap part? Let's do that. You know that I love you. Without you, I'm in despair. You are my everything, and without you, I would die. You are my happiness upon each awakening. I want to be by your side. I want to be there.

Sounds better when she does it. I told you she sounded better I'm going to every desperat and I'm a told you she sounded better. On her next album, Entree Amimundo,

that's coming to my world, you get the mighty Kcrias, which was my all-time favorite Selena song even before I saw the pissed-off umpire thing. You also get her second monster cumbia hit,

Como La Floor, that's like the flower, which is very arguably the single greatest Selena song of all. time. Like the flower, with all the love you gave me, it withered. Comole Flores on the shortlist of the most radiant and infectiously joyful, sad songs ever born. But aye, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-Hurt's. This song will never wither. This song will outlive us all when Casey Musgraves,

country star and national treasure, played the Houston Livestock show and rodeo in 2019. She played Energy Stadium where the Houston Texans play. She covered Komola Floor in honor of Selena's final live performance at the long-gone Houston Astrodome in 1995. I can't imagine most of the crowd was expecting a Selena cover from Casey, but they all knew what to do. The Entree Ami Mundo album also gives you two English-speaking hits, the chest-beating power ballad, where did the feeling go, and the much sweeter and less aggrieved, Missing My Baby. We're in full-blown crossover mode on Missing My Baby. This is sumptuous R&B. This is best-case scenario, shopping mall, slow dance music.

Fantastic song, a fantastic bridge to R&B fans, teen pop fans, English-speaking fans of all inclinations, just so long as they're walking over that bridge towards Selena and not the reverse. If Missing My Baby got her a bunch of new fans, Great. But all of those new fans needed to hear Komola Floor and Kcrias as soon as possible. If you're relatively new to Selena, need just one album to start with, that's going to be Selena Live from 1993, which made her the first Tahano artist to win the Grammy in what was then called the best Mexican-American album category. Tihano music, as the Anything for Selena podcast argues, lost a great deal of cultural ground with young people after Selena's passing. Losing ground especially to the genre known as regional Mexican. The differences between Tahano and regional Mexican are subtle if you're a relative outsider.

Both are great if you love accordions and dancing and exuberance even amid profound sadness. But those differences are glaring if this is your music, your culture, your history. All of which makes Selena Live both a career highlight and a Tahano music highlight. This concert starts with a nearly 10-minute medley of Komola LaFloor and Baila Estacumbia, which is like the Rolling Stone starting a show with a medley of painted black and I can't get no satisfaction. To reiterate, dance this kumbia with me. Move your waist. By this point, Selena is no longer a teenager and is married to her hot shot guitar player, Chris Perez. Selina's father, Abraham, disapproved of this match.

Selina defied her father. She and Chris eloped in 1992. Abraham got over it. In the Selena biopic, the J-Lo movie, her first kiss with Chris Perez. comes when they're dancing alone on their tour bus with Depeche Mode's Policy of Truth on the radio, and when the kiss comes, the song changes to John Waits Missing You. These are such random song choices that I believe that they are accurate. And so, as far as I'm concerned, canonically, Salina's first kiss with her husband came to John Waits missing you.

No Tihano connection whatsoever. Still an excellent choice. The last Selena album released before Selena's death is 1994's Amor Prohibido. forbidden love, and she doesn't sing in English at all, and yet shrewd crossover moves are everywhere. A more prohibido the song is about, in a matter of speaking, cultural clashes not spoken of in polite society at all. She just happens to sing the chorus with the pop star force of five Taylor Danes standing on each other's shoulders. Forbidden love, they murmur in the streets, because we are from different societies.

There's an extra-boient hit called Beed-Bee-Bee-B-D-Bomb, which plays out like a Tahano version of Walking on Sunshine. There's a song called Photos I Requirdos, that's Pictures and Memories, which is very explicitly a cumbia remake of the Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang.

Back on the Chain Gang is a top five song of the 80s, period. Photos iroquitos makes me absurdly happy. There are wild songs on this record. There's a song on this record. called Technocumbia. No translation necessary. You know who she sounds like? George Michael. If they come to dance, well, let's enjoy. If they come to sleep, get out of here. There's a song called Yano. That's not anymore. The original version's tough to find on most

streaming services now, but it's a pop-punk song, basically, not like Paramore. You know who it is? It's Pat Benatar's We Belong, also arguably a top five song of the 80s. Selina is hitting you with her best shot. Now you can go. There is nothing more to discuss. Oh, not anymore, not anymore. This is an artist who can do anything, who can sing anything, who can take inspiration from anyone, but still be indomitably and unmistakably, herself. This is a pop star with no inhibitions and no ceiling. I have no interest in dwelling on the death of Selena Quintania. Selina was shot and killed in Corpus Christi, Texas on March 31st, 1995 at the age of 23 by the president of her fan club. I don't have the language in either language, in any language,

to express how traumatic, how formative, how profound a loss this was for Tihano music, for Latin music, for pop music, for Texas, for Mexico, for America, for the planet. Selina's shocking death left her next and final album, July 1995's Dreaming of You, in the surreal and impossible position of serving as both Selena's introduction to a sizable percentage of the American pop audience and Selena's farewell to the world. Like any posthumous album, Dreaming of You, is almost maddeningly incomplete. Before her death, she'd only recorded four tracks specifically for it. It's almost tragically chaotic.

It's this bizarre combination of moods and objectives. At long last, it's her official English-speaking crossover move, but it's also a many greatest hits package, Komola Flore, Amor Prohibito, and Missing My Baby, I'll appear. Selina had a small acting role in the 1995 rom-com Don Juan DeMarco, which starred Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, and Marlon Brando, And she'd recorded two ranchera ballads, two solo two, you only you, and El Toro Relajo, the Bull Relaxed. But those songs didn't make the movie soundtrack, so they both show up on Dreaming of You also.

There's a techno-cumbia remix. There's a duet with David Byrne, the Talking Heads, David Byrne, called God's Child, Baila Conmigo. There are two monster soft rock ballads that don't so much cross over as just engulf everything, starting with track one, I Could Fall in Love. It's only in retrospect, of course, but this song is so exquisitely downbeat that it's like it summoned its own official music video, which, of course, by that point, was a Selena-specific in-memorium montage. It's a cruel trick of history that you hear this song now so clearly as the end, when it was so clearly meant to be the true beginning. In dreaming of you, the song, it's the same way.

Selina finally had it. She had her own version of Madonna's crazy for you. Or Janet Jackson's Come Back to Me. Or Paula Abdul's Rush Rush. And it's perfect for what it is. I'd call it the prom theme of a lifetime, but that's thinking too small. That's criminally, culturally limiting.

What's heartbreaking is this is a fantastic song in which Selena is flaunting, let's put it at 8% of what she was capable of, vocally, emotionally. That's not a knock on the song. It's a knock on a pop music universe that should have elevated her to superstar status back in 1992 or so. Now, all we could do was mourn her, and mourn the airtime we hadn't yet given her. Dreaming of You, the album, debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart. It was the first Billboard number one album to be sung, in Spanish, and it remains at around 3 million copies sold the best-selling, primarily Spanish-speaking album in American history. Meanwhile, Dreaming of You, the song, was the

Salina song you were most likely to hear on pop radio in America in 1995. But it's only on the bridge to Dreaming of You that oblivious American pop radio listeners were even informed that they'd been listening to an already famous Mexican-American singer. My heart. I can't stop thinking of you. This is unsubtle as bilingual crossover attempts go, but it gets the job done. And anyway, with somebody this radiant, subtlety is overrated.

How I need you. My love, how I miss you. There is no J-Lo pop star without Selena. I imagine you hear that there is no blank without blank construction a lot, but no, really. J-Lo only decided to become a pop star after playing Selena in a movie and being so thrilled by a stadium full of people cheering for her

while she was recreating Selena's final Astrodome concert, which further means that without Selena, there might not have been any late 90s mainstream Latin music boom in America at all. Ricky Martin, Mark Anthony. The other cliche here would be to say that Latin music as a whole now lives partly in Selena's shadow, but a far greater concern to me is that Selena the human, as we'd ideally remember and celebrate her, now exists partly in the shadow of Selena the sainted and extravagantly mourned tragic figure.

There's just so much worthwhile data on this person, such a wealth of material, so much content. But it is very important to me, the deeper your personal Selena Rabbit Hole goes, that you appreciate both her huge global pop star gestures, but also her smallest and humblest gestures. That video of Selena singing Kay Creas to the dude at home plate, I found that initially as part of a four-part series of homemade YouTube videos titled

Selena Funny Slash Diva Moments, Parts 1 through 4. This was Part 2 specifically. Selena's diva moments are also funny. At one point she says that her husband is so quiet that sometimes she has to slap him just to make sure he's still alive. But I'm hung up on a much tinier moment from Part 2. Selena's being interviewed by a nice, quiet, intimidated-looking lady. They're sitting right next to each other, And Selena just leans over and fixes the lady's clip-on microphone. Selena tells her to look up. The lady looks mortified and nervous, but also tremendously charmed.

I can't explain why I keep re-watching this. It's like six seconds. It's just such a beautifully human interaction. It undercuts the Selena myth, but also, of course, burnishes the Selena myth. Dreaming of you, the song works the same way for me. It's humble. It's almost shy. It's all the more effective for how obvious it is that Selena's holding back.

Dreaming of you peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the way, modest, but impressive, but modest. Her smash number one hits, she surely figured at the time, everyone surely figured at the time would come later. They'd come soon. My guest today is Susie Expozito, music writer for the LA Times. She's written for Rolling Stone, Vogue, and many other places. Susie, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me on here, Rob. Of course. You wrote a great piece for the times about the 2021 Grammys not giving Selena a huge tribute in honor of this lifetime achievement award she got. Did that snub surprise you? Does the music industry as an institution give Selena anywhere near the respect she deserves? I feel like Latinos are having a constant party for Selena and it's just been going on for the last 25 years, almost 26 years now. I feel like we've been in constant mourning of her. And I love her.

And I will explain to you why she's so important. Going back to the Grammys, I mean, the thing is is that the Grammys, they give several of these lifetime achievement awards every year. This year, they had some of the recipients included talking heads, you know, and I think Grandmaster Flash. Salt and Pepper also. and Salton Peppa, like, oh, that would have been such a cool medley. I know, I know. They should have just included a Selena song in the Salt and Peppa medley. That would have been one way to go.

Cardi B could have done both of them. Absolutely. She is a Latina. She is a bilingual artist. She would have smoked it. Absolutely. But yeah, this would have been such a cool opportunity. And the Grammys have such a, they have such an awful track record with Latinos.

I'm just going to say it. I mean, like, look, Latinos had to start their own recording academy in 2000, you know. And that was the last year that a Latin album won in one of the big four categories. So that a Latin artist, a Latin music artist, and this artist is specifically Santana. Right, right. That was the Santana year. That was the Santana year, the year that Supernatural cleaned up at the Grammys. And the thing about Supernatural is that in songs like Smooth, which I believe won a Grammy,

Smooth featuring Rob Thomas, won several Grammys that year, it's because, you know, they had an Anglophone ambassador to make Latin music relatable to the voters. What does that say about the voting body of the Recording Academy? You know, and what does it say that Latinos had to start our own recording? Academy because it was that bad. So putting all of this in the context, like I think people were extremely excited to see that Selena was finally getting a Lifetime Achievement Award and a general award in a category that was not just, you know, some niche category for Latin music because she won a single

Grammy in her life. She won, I believe, the year before she died in the Mexican-American category. In 94, she won for her live album. But, you know, I wonder how she would have fared, you know, like if she was still alive today. Absolutely. You mentioned Cardi. My favorite part of your article is that you linked to Cardi singing Colmo LaFlor to a picture of Selena, which has put me in a good mood for like the next five days, probably. Yeah.

I mean, Cardi B, she's a lot. She's half Dominican, half Trinney. She grew up in the U.S. She grew up in the Bronx. And like, you know, like so many of us who were born in the U.S., she doesn't think of Latin music like as, oh, that's Mexican music. And I'm not Mexican, so I don't listen to that. Like most of us these days, we don't think that way.

Maybe some of our parents did. But, you know, we grew up with, we grew up with Selena. We grew up with salsa. I'm half Cuban, half Belizean. I just kind of like grew up with any kind of Spanish language music. I grew up with Daddy Yankee and stuff like that. So I feel like Cardi is just such a fantastic example of like Latinx culture in the U.S., specifically as experienced by people from the U.S.

And someone who's also a great example of that is Selena. She is so Texas. Like she was such a Texan, you know? Yeah. Spoke with a southern accent and was making music in Spanish. And she didn't even understand some of the stuff singing. She had to learn as she went along. And I feel like so many of us, myself included, it's like we're,

I feel like I'm forever going to be learning Spanish or getting more fluent. But yeah, I feel like that's what makes Selena so important. And, you know, these days what makes someone like Cardi B. important. I think that there's a thread that ties the two of them together. Right. You wrote the Rolling Stone cover story about Bad Bunny, you know, who won a Grammy in 2021. And there's a world of difference musically and culturally. But do you see anything tangible that he takes from Selena or learned from Selena? You know, Puerto Rico is such a different, it's a totally different context than those of us who grew up stateside because Puerto Rico is a colony.

and I never talked to Bad Bunny about Selena. I'm not sure, like, I'm sure he's probably heard of Selena. I mean, it's kind of hard to avoid her. Right. But I feel like they were similar in that they were both such just unique, inimitable artists. Right. It's really hard to do what they do. And like Selena, Bad Bunny has such an eclectic taste.

The thing about Selena that was so special is that she, you know, she started out making like regional Mexican music. She did like De Hano. She did she did cumbia. But I think that she was still such a fan of like Janet Jackson and Jody Wattley. She loved that whole new Jack swing era was extremely influential to her. A lot of like, you know, she, she liked freestyle. She liked, she liked rock, you know.

And bad bunny is the same way. He's just like an omnivore when it comes to music. So they're the kinds of people. It's like, I mean, you want to say that they're like once in a generation kinds of talent. But I think that there are way more bad bunnies and Selena's out there than we really know. It's just a matter of who gets chances, you know, and who has a support system because Selena has, I mean, I mean, she had such an amazing. support system and her family. They went to bat for her.

Bad Bunny has an excellent team that he kind of developed organically in Puerto Rico, you know, like with his friends. Because he was working checkout, you know, just a few years ago, which is incredible to me. The other person you'd interviewed is Selena Gomez, you know, who just put out a Spanish language, EP. And she talked to you about feeling comfortable enough now. to sing in Spanish and sort of learning Spanish by singing in Spanish. Is the decision for a Latin artist about what language to sing in,

like almost a political decision? If you're in the United States, then yes. Because I feel like, I mean, we're not the center of the universe. It's hard to believe. But I feel at the same time, the U.S. is like the biggest consumer of music and culture. culture and entertainment. And we just have the biggest entertainment industry. So it's like Latin artists in the past,

if they wanted to cash in on American audiences, they would have to sing in English, you know, like Shakira did, like Ricky Martin did. But that was the 90s and the early 2000s. Then you had artists like Daddy Yankee. Daddy Yankee got really popular when I was in high school and he never sang in English. Right.

He put out gasoline and like that was a very universally popular song. But then he like up the ante with Despacito and that was just like the rare moment when an artist like an American artist like Justin Bieber actually had took interest and was like maybe I should sing this in Spanish. That almost never happens. No. So I feel like that's part of the the magic of the current Latin crossover that's happened. happening now is people are way more open and open to listening to music in Spanish. So in the case of Selena Gomez crossing over to the Spanish language market after making music only in English, I think that's something that we're going to see a lot more venturing.

I don't know, kind of going back and like into the diaspora, into like Latin America, getting in touch with their roots, the same way that Selena Kintanilla did so many years ago. Do you have a personal favorite Selena era or album or even song? Like when you think of her, what is she singing and what is she wearing? My favorite Selena song is Amor Prohibido. And it's a song about is so heartbreaking, but it's a song about falling in love with someone who's of a different class. It was actually based on the story of her grandparents,

or her great-grandparents, I'm sorry. And, you know, her great-grandmother was a maid. for this wealthy family in Mexico and she fell in love with one of the sons and they had this secret love affair. And then one day he got shot and died of gangrene. He was like out hunting. I didn't know it was gangrene. Shit. Wow. Yeah, because he didn't get to like the hospital in time or something. It was so tragic. But yeah, so she, so it turns out Selena's great grandmother was pregnant. Like she was like a few months pregnant and the family found out kicked her out of the house, but she was like, oh, but I'll always have this love.

Right, right. And so Selena, like her family has like a letter that their great grandpa wrote to their great grandma before he died. And I mean, the lyrics are like inspired by the things he wrote in this letter. But I feel like I'm more prohibited. the beauty of that song is generally just like the sentiment of loving someone in defiance of like what society dictates is like the right match for you and for me as someone who's queer and I'm not the only person who kind of read into this a little differently but I think it's a song that speaks to like love is a really beautiful thing and as long as you know you're like consenting adults right

It's a beautiful thing to be in love with someone and to be loved by someone. And it's really difficult if you're in a family that doesn't accept you. If you're in a society that doesn't accept you and doesn't think you deserve to be loved, it's a really beautiful song that touches on that. As far as Selena's English language songs, is dreaming of you a good Selena song? Is it a good song? Is it a Selena song?

It is a fantastic R&B ballad. But, you know, it's like Selena style. And I feel like, I mean, Selena was robbed. Like, she was robbed of her life. And she was just on the precipice of making the R&B album of her dreams. And she kind of did, you know, I mean, it just, it was unfinished at the time that she was murdered by she who must not be named. But, no, I mean. she has songs on there that are incredible.

Like she has that song with Barrio Boys. That's like a pure new Jack Swing song. It's a great song. She just had such a sixth sense for pop. And it didn't matter what genre she was working in. And that was what was so brilliant about her. And with dreaming of you, it felt like that was the song that had just been living in her heart for years.

You know, it felt like something that was dormant in her. and she could finally bust out that like kind of Mariah Carey song. Have you watched the Selena Netflix series at all? Like whether it's the movie or the podcast or everything written about her, does the image of Selena in pop culture now square

with how you remember her or think of her? In the series, you can kind of see the gap between how her family remembers her because her family helped, like, produce. Right, Suzanne especially, but yeah, yeah. Yeah, so her sister had a heavy hand in that. But the way that her family remembers her is so funny and so counter to like the mythology around her.

And even the way, I feel like Christian Seranos is a wonderful actress. But I wonder, I like would love to be a fly on the wall of like when they were in the room with her and they were trying to like explain to her how to play Selena. You know, her performance in the series, it makes me think like, oh, my God, if my family made a series about my life, they would make me the most, like, pleasant, demur, Disney princess, who, like, was a total virgin and, like, was very, like, obedient, you know? Because in this series, he's very obedient. until she meets Chris Perez. Right, right. She was this like cool metal guy. The rock and roll guy, right.

Yeah. And I love, I love their story. It's so, oh, so tragic. But when you watch interviews of Selena in English and in Spanish, she was really sassy. She was a firecracker. And my main criticism of the series is that we didn't see that in her, but maybe in the second season, that's something that they cultivate in her character.

That's what I'm hoping, because I feel like in the first season, we mostly got Selena in relation to her family, and I feel like her family in the series definitely, like, just steamrolled over her and, like, so many different ways. And maybe that's how it was in real life, you know? Last question, like, how does the movie,

how does J-Lo as Selena hold up for you now? I think it's great. I rewatched it and it was great. I loved Jalo's performance in Selena and I feel like part of that too is that Jailo is a Leo. She's a fire sign. Selena was an Aries. I don't know. Like Jaila really tapped into that fire sign energy and it was actually perfect.

They almost had Salma Hayek play Selena and that would not have made any sense. Salma Hayek is from Mexico, you know? Like she's actually from Mexico. Whereas J-Lo, I think, tapped into the very unique context of being a Latina born in the United States. Even though she's Puerto Rican, I feel like there's something about us. And when we go to Latin America, and I'm speaking mostly for myself, but for a lot of my friends, when we go to Latin America, people are so confused by us because it's like we look local. But then they hear us talk and they're like,

what is happening? Right. And I feel like both J-Lo and Selena, like, had that, you know, they've definitely had that experience. They're both incredibly American stars, you know. And I think J-Lo really channeled the fire in her performances and also in her attitude. Yeah.

This has been great, Susie. Thank you so much for talking. We really appreciate it. Thanks to our guest, Susie, X-Ex. Spasito. Special thanks this week to David Lada and Jessica Buen Teo for the translation help. Thanks as always to our producers, Justin Sales and Isaac Lee. And thanks to you for listening. And now, without further ado, here's Selena with Dreaming of You. See you next week.