Selena: Gone But Never Forgotten

Joseph, I know you very well and I think I know the answer. But what was your dream job growing up in El Paso, Texas?

Well, my dream job growing up was that I wanted to help people and make people feel better, like pretty like pretty, Yeah, pretty much. I just I wanted people to come to me for me to make them feel pretty. That was my dream job.

And fast forward and you are living the dream job now as a celebrity makeup artist. But Joseph, what if I told you that In nineteen ninety four, Selena Kitania opened a hybrid beauty salon and fashion boutique.

Okay, a new dream job unlocked? Tell me more.

I mean we could have worked there together. I could have styled the girls. You could have done their makeup. We would have been the dream team for Selena's boutique. Okay. So a year after Selena won her first Grammy, she founded Selena et Cetera in Corpus and they had two locations right, one in Corpus, one in San Antonio, and each location was a one stop shop for everything like head to toe. By the way, why does this not

Okay, Well, I would definitely be overqualified because I was just in l I have sixteen Vogue stories, five Vogue covers. I mean, what do you see?

I mean, I'm pretty sure you would have been like a dream higher for the Keith Nias. Not gonna lie like they would kill to have your talent. But sadly we all know that Selena et Cetera is not around anymore.

Oooh okay, how dare you give me a new dream job only to crush my dreams right in front of me.

I know it wasn't very nice to me, but I was just trying to set the scene for our audience listening.

It's fine, It's fine, all in the line of Judy as a podcast co host. Anyway, continue, okay.

So Selena Etcetera was Selena's first business excursion outside of music, and after the breakout success of nineteen ninety two's and Tremimundo and nineteen ninety three's Selena Live. Selena's power as a brand was clear.

And her iconic, if slightly beatle does she look for? The cover of Entremimundo was her own design, as were many of her on stage looks.

No, she was a fashion designer, maybe not like classically trained, but she definitely had a point of view, and so this boutique for her made a ton of sense creatively and business wise, and as a nice bonus. It was a venture that Abraham would have zero control over.

Oh the mohawk energy continues.

And for this exact reason, her dad was really resistant to this business. But Selena et Cetera opened its doors to immediate success, and Selena would soon enter negotiations to open other locations in Monterrey and in Puerto Rico, and over the course of just a year, Selena et Cetera

I mean five million dollars from two locations. She was five million dollars.

Imagine that now, like a nineteen ninety four five million dollars was bank.

That's fifty billion. She was literally over. I'm telling you, she's building an empire overnight.

And it was an empire made up of legions of her devoted fans. Honestly, if she were around today, oh my god. I know that the number one most followed person on Instagram is Selena Gomez, but I have a feeling Quintania would dethrone Gomez as like the queen of social.

I mean, that's capital f fandom. Your behind your swifties. They do not compare to the follow up.

No, but back before fans could tap into a network of millions with the tap of a phone. These diehard fans had fan clubs, regional fan clubs.

Fans had to put in the work. Back in the day, you would pay a fee through the mail to get access to exclusive fan goodies. Again through the mail, the snail mail, like the mailbox.

Exactly, and back in the day, if you wanted more Selena, this is how you got it. By nineteen ninety three, Selena's biggest San Antonio area fan club had reached more than five thousand members.

Together with your fashion boutiques. This was the start of something big the empire.

But sadly, the very same person in charge of those new pillars of Selena's empire would be the one to bring about its premature end. I know Joseph today on Becoming an Icon, Selena's meteoric rise and untimely fall. I'm your host, Liliana Osquez.

And I'm Joseph Carrio and this is Becoming an Icon.

A weekly podcast where we give you the rundown on how today's most famous Latin v stars have shaped pop culture.

And given the world some extra level.

Sit back and get comfortable.

Because we are going in the only way we know.

How with whenas, I'm unassas and a lot of opinions as we relive their greatest achievements on our journey to find out what makes them still iconic. After the success of enfre Mi Mundo, there came no rest for the weary.

Selena Ilosdino's found themselves on a tight deadline for the follow up, so much so that they skipped their usual January vacation to work on the album.

Production on Amor Privido lasted six months while recording took around two weeks, as did post production. Recording was snuck in in between touring commitments and opening of Selena's aforementioned fashion boutiques.

This makes it sound like such a rush job, and yet it's arguably their best album.

I mean, some people thrive with a deadline. I am part of that club. Agreed, and fortunately at this point in the band's career they were firing on all cylinders.

Singles like Comola Floor had broken Selena through the audiences from all across the Latino world. So with amor Pramdo, the band pushed the limits of Cumbia like they never had before.

Yeah, there's the mix of Mariacci and Cumbia on Cunaves that song.

Yeah, and there's a cumbia fied cover of a Pretender song Photosqueros.

What photosuerdos is not an original Selena song? Why do you know everything?

It was born that way?

Okay, So this is why I love doing this podcast because that is one of my favorite Selena songs. And I did not know that photos Iriquerdos is a Cumbia fied version of a Pretender song. I straight up thought Aby wrote that and was like jamming it out. Wow, the more you know the more you know. Okay, back to the podcast, and by the way, there's of course the reggae cumbia of b O.

Love, and it's all tied together with that voice. Selena is innocent and buvely on the title track and on Chico de la Partamento close. Then on souna vest she's snarling vengeful as she disavows her former love.

Same with the closing track. Ya know, she goes full roquet.

Yeah. According to Chris, Selena had sort of fallen in love with acting. By that point. She had appeared in a number of Mexican tele novelas in the past couple of years and was in negotiations to star in one. She probably brought that cher performances in the booth.

One thousand percent. You could really see her starting to scratch that acting itch. When she started putting out the videos for songs like Amorribido and Noma Kadamas like girl was serving you face.

She was definitely in every single shot front and back. She was. She is a star. I know.

I mean, let's talk about amor Pribido because every time I see this video, it is such a bizarre video for that song, Like when you hear the song Amobido, I just don't think like Joshua Tree, Selena like dancing doors. Yeah, despite the weird sets in the middle of the desert. One thing that he for me in this video is Selena's wardrobe. Yes, guys, it is so quintessential classic Selena.

The way she wore those oversized shirts so well, but also such tight clothes, like she really just would bring it. She would bring it. So speaking of bringing it, hold on back to Nomakadamas. The dress. I can't like the way she showed up like a star. She's such a pageant girl.

Yeah, she's the beauty queen.

Like the curl and the front her hair, that dress. Didn't she wear that dress before?

Yes, you have such a good eye. So the dress that Selena is wearing in the video for Noma Ka Damas is actually her Grammy's dress that she wore to accept her grammy. But I think what so cool about this dress is that do you know that she bought it at the mall.

Of course she was at the mall eating pizza. Duh.

She obviously bought it at the mall. She was like, I'm gonna wear this dress and win a Grammy and then I'm going to get my cost per wear out of it and wear it in the v Vale.

Hello.

She bought it at the Houston Galeria. And the dress was from a brand who I'm blanking on the name of the brand, but it was part of the Cachet family. Do you remember Cache Stop dude.

So I would go with my mom and my friends take Cashet during Christmas. At the church that I went to, they had something called the Haaladazzle and everybody would have to look the best, and so no one would go to Express or anything like that. Everyone would go to Cachet to get like the dresses. I can't believe I remember that, and now it probably sells for I don't even know well.

Fun fact, so that dress is actually completely out of production, and so when the costume designer for the Jennifer Lopez Lina movie went to get the original, they actually remade it just for the film for j Loo, which is amazing because like they didn't even have it anymore. I know, But if you are interested in Selena's fashion, you have to visit the Selena Museum in Corpus Christi. That is where the dress is. It lives in the house, along

Guy always felt the pressure a.

Motorproib though, stands out as a labor of love from a band at its peak. Ab would come to Selena unsure of his song ideas, and Selena's reassurance would power him through the rest of the process.

One of Aby's fondest memories comes from the recording of Nomaka Damas, which Selena had recorded in only four takes.

AB now wanted to do a fifth take, but Selena basically said, uh no, I'm going to the mall.

Literally, all I want to do is eat pizza at the mall with Selena.

But Aviy in her grammy dress and the hair from the video.

One hundred Natalie.

The lead single for Amor Purvido was the title track. However, AB had fought to get beaty Bitty bomb Bomb to be first in line.

I love beatty beatty bomb Bomb, but I think the label made the right move there for sure.

But quick tangent about beatty bitty bombomb and why AB loved it so much. So the story goes like this. When the band was on tour, they would vamp on stage during their soundchecks. Selena would make up lyrics and sing kind of like nonsense about whatever she saw on stage that day. She was singing the phrase itty bitty bubbles and you're probably wondering why. Well, apparently there was a bubble machine somewhere on that stage, not surprising if

Like you can hear that right totally one hundred I hear I heard it when you said itty bitty bubbles.

Point is that song grew completely organically from the fact that this band was totally in sync, like they could take a improvised phrase like antybody bubbles and put it through the Selena and Aby magic and get a hit like beaty Bitty Bomb.

Bumb They were at the absolute height of their live performances.

Which brings us too.

The Astrodome.

In nineteen ninety five, on the tour for Almordreddo, Selena played a legendary show at the Houston Astrodome featuring that iconic purple jumpsuit. Wow, this performance happened I think just a couple of months, maybe a month before she tragically

Love that, Okay, See, that's why we need to go, because I really want to see that material, like because it was like shiny, it had like little crystals or diamonds or was it just kind of like an iridescent to it? You know. Speaking of this performance inspires me to just shake my shoulders because she was just moving up and down.

To me, there's such a beauty to this concert, but there's also such a sadness because I think when you go back and watch, and it's been released as a special you can watch it online or stream it. But when you see her performing this, she is at the very top of her game. And when you see her singing AMoD brobido and like by Leastacumbia in the purple jumpsuit in front of sixty thousand screaming devoted fit in her home state, like I'm getting goosebumps, like you can

As I was watching it, you know, I just was smiling the whole time, Like my cheeks got tired because I was just watching it. I was just kind of like wow. Also just to see her give it her all.

This performance is like peak peak Selena. Right. It broke attendance records, and earlier on the tour, Selena had also broken the attendance record at Miami's Gaiotro Festival. It was Selena's biggest tour yet.

I'm What for You, Though, spent ninety eight consecutive weeks at the number one on Billboard's Top Latin Albums Chart, ninety seven consecutive weeks at number one in the regional Mexican Album chart, and.

At the Tajanno Music Awards, Selena swept, winning every category she was nominated in. The album won three Billboard Latin Music Awards and a slew of other Latin music awards.

And yet it got snubbed at the Grammys, receiving only a nomination.

Get it together, guys, I feel like the Grammys have been out of sync with what is actually happening in music for decades on decades on decades since then, and they never got it together. You know, here's the thing, what are you gonna do? Right, Grammy or no Grammy? With Amore prodido, Selena was the biggest Latin American star in the country.

Wow.

By the end of nineteen ninety four, it had sold half a million copies with that.

Label was finally satisfied. As Selena and the band continued touring, EMI began setting the stage for Selena's English language crossover album.

But as we all know, the long awaited crossover would never come. We should say that we're not going to linger too long on this part of the story.

Given the choice between remembering how Selena was taken from us and remembering all that she gave us, We're going to take a bit more from Columbi.

After all, the show is becoming an icon, not losing an icon. But of course we all know that tragically we did lose one at the hands of one Yolanda Saldivar.

Yolanda Saldivar worked as a nurse before taking her niece to say Selena in concert back in ninety one during the Entre Mimundo tour.

After seeing Selena in concert, Salivad went from Selena skeptic to Selena fanatic. She was inspired to start the Selena Fan Club in San Antonio.

So she called it Abraham a number of times. He says. She left him fifteen messages she would say that she only left.

Him three, whatever the number was. Knowing Abraham, some part of him must have appreciated the persistence, so he granted her permission to form the fan club. Selena met Salivad in December of nineteen ninety one, and a friendship formed.

For twenty two dollars, fan club members would receive Selena memorabilia, a T shirt, exclusive interviews with the band, fun facts about Selena and the Dinos because remember this was pre internet and concert announcements.

By nineteen ninety four, more than eight thousand fans had joined the club. By the way, not me doing the math on like eight thousand times twenty two dollars, you would always a hustler anyway, Salivad quit nursing to run the fan club full time. By then, the whole family had come to trust her, so much so that Selena hired her to manage the new Selena et Cetera boutiques in Corpus Christi and San Antonio.

Selena would then go on to sign Saldivar as her registered agent in San Antonio, putting Saldivar in charge of all legal affairs relating to Selena's business ventures.

By the way, never do that. There is no lesson learned, lesson learned, never ever. And here's why. Saldivar was authorized to write and cash checks in connection with Selena's business and was given an American Express card for business expenses.

And this is where the family started to notice things were off.

The Selena, Etcetera company bank accounts couldn't pay the bills due to Saldivar's lavish use of the AMEX card on Lincoln Town cars, expensive restaurants, and cell phones.

Okay, two cell phones is kind of sus even today, but in nine, nineteen ninety five, what was that bitch thinking.

One was a burner? Clearly Meanwhile, Selena ecceid. Her employees were calling Saldivar two faced, saying that she was nice when Selena was around, but abused them. When no one from the family was there to notice.

Saldovar fired anyone she didn't like, and within a year, both boutiques had lost more than half their staff, each going from thirty eight employees to just fourteen.

The remaining employees became fed up and raised their concerns to Selena, but Selena trusted Saldivar, so she stayed.

Selena's cousin was hired to work with Saldivar and helped extend the business into Mexico. She quit within a week.

Saldivar also fought with Selena's fashion designer, Martin Gomez, who accused her of mutilating his pieces and establishing a reign of terror.

In retaliation, Saldivar recorded her conversations with Gomez in order to convince Selena to sideline him, and Selena did. Reporters from the Dallas Morning News reported that Saldivar's devotion to Selena quote unquote bordered on obsession.

When Selena began consulting a business associate in Monterrey in the hopes of opening a boutique there, Saldivar's intense jealousy led Selena to visit the area incognito, wearing wigs and flying under her husband's surname, all to hide it from Saldivar.

Yeah, who needs a friend like that. Finally, in January nineteen ninety five, the dam Baroque Abraham became inundated with calls and letters from the Selena fan club members who hadn't received their memorabilia despite paying the.

Fee and at both Selena, etcetera. Boutiques. Overdue bills began to pile up in the mail.

So Abraham went investigating and found that Saldivar had embezzled over sixty thousand dollars from both the fan club and the boutiques.

Abraham confronted Saldivar with documentation of the missing funds. He grilled her for an explanation. According to Abraham, she simply stared at him as he questioned her. Eventually, she got up.

And left, and Abraham pulled an Abraham for once with good reason and forbid Saldivar from contacting Selena.

But Selena was reluctant to cut ties with her. She still trusted Saldivar's business acumen, and Saldivar had access to bank records and other documents necessary for taxes.

This is where I start yelling at the TV, like, girl, just hire a tax guy and get the fuck out.

I know this is a lifetime movie playing before our eyes, but it's real, you guys, and we all know how it ends. It's like so hard to go back to this place. And Selena like she was so sweet and trusting, right, she kept Saldivar in her orbit. Despite all of these red flags, Saldivar then bought a pistol and repeatedly attempted to lure Selena into a hotel room alone. On March thirty first, nineteen ninety five, Saldivar succeeded.

That morning, Selena went to Saldivar's motel room to retrieve more stolen goods and bank records from her, and, according to a boutique employee who had spoken to her to fire Saldivar.

At the motel, guests heard an argument, then a gunshot. Selena had been shot in the back as she attempted to flee. She managed to run to the lobby and named Saldivar as her assailant, but there she collapsed.

Paramedics attempted to revive her for over an hour, but it was no use. Selena was gone.

The day after Selena's murder, thousands of grieving fans showed up for a candlelight vigil. Then the family displayed her casket at the Bayfront Auditorium. An hour before the viewing, a rumor circulated that the casket was empty, so the family decided to go open casket. Between thirty and forty thousand fans viewed Selena's remains, while seventy eight thousand signed a book of condolences. The following day, she was buried at Seaside Memorial Park in Corpus Christi, Texas.

We feel her loss so deeply as fans, it's almost easy to forget how devastating it must have been for the family. Apart from losing their artistic center of gravity, they lost a sister, a daughter, a wife.

Years later, in an oral history of Selena's life an Untimely Death in Texas Monthly, Suzette Keithania would say, I used to get out all my photos and open up my sister's traveling makeup case so I could smell her. I took over the boutiques because I knew Selena would have wanted to keep them going. But it was traumatic all day. Every day people came into the store to tell me how much they loved my sister, and sometimes I had to go into the back and just cry

With work, In the same article, Aby would say that nothing would ever be the same as sharing the stage with his sister. Quote when we performed in Central America, there were times when the emotion was so overwhelming that I would start to cry. I would turn away from the crowd and act like something was wrong with the amplifier until I gathered myself. You have to understand, she was generating electricity, and I was part of that conductor.

But Selena's mother Marcella would tell Susette, your father cries in the shower because he doesn't want me to know he's crying. He thinks I can't hear him, but I can.

For all that there is to say about Abraham, and we've said plenty, you got to feel for him here.

Absolutely. It's sometimes hard to distinguish between Abraham the dad and Abraham the businessman, But if you think of them as one and the same, it's a little easier to wrap your head around why he was as fiercely protective as he was over the band and over Selena in particular.

A parent's worst nightmare is losing their kids. A business owner's worst nightmare is losing the business. Both of these things happened, and like, maybe we feel a little ikey about the second part, but I'm not sure that makes his grief any less real.

And it all happened at the hands of someone Abraham and Selena were willing to trust, as opposed to someone Abraham was skeptical towards right away, like Chris.

For example, Blame tends to follow death. In the best cases, you end up blaming yourself for a loved one's passing.

But in a lot of cases, blame gets passed around, especially in a death as traumatic as this one. Bad blood still remains between Abraham and Chris. Meanwhile, some fans accuse Abraham of milking his daughter's memory decades after her passing, while others her accusations at Chris.

Grief has this horrible dark power when it's attached to tragedy, like the killer went to jail, and yet we still need an answer for the injustice.

And if you ever spent any time going through the comments on YouTube for old Selena videos, you see a lot of people imagining what could have.

Been Selena playing at the Super Bowl halftime show, Selena on the collab with the new Hot Artist.

And you'll also see plenty of arguments on how Selena is remembered, Selena as a commodity, Selena as an untouchable idol.

Not to mention arguments over where Selena would stand today on certain political issues, We'll say as a Mexican American woman with a religious upbringing.

Which, without getting into it, suffice it to say, we can never really know who Selena would have become if she were still with us, Like would she be a mom, Like would she be mentoring like other female artists. And so, instead of lamenting or arguing over what she could have given us, the best thing that we can do is just remember what she did give us.

After Selena's death, Amoor Probrido went platinum multiple times over, as did her other albums over successive years.

Then came the release of Dreaming of You the summer after We Said Goodbye. In the wake of the Amor Probido tour and amid all the turmoil surrounding her boutiques, Selena had been recording tracks for her long awaited English crossover.

The label had tapped Grammy winning songwriters for Selena to collaborate with. Dreaming of You includes that small handful of collaborations, including the title track and I Could Fall in Love.

Dreaming of You debuted at the top of the Billboard two hundred, netting the second largest release for an album that year besides Michael Jackson. It was also the second largest first week sales for a female musician, behind Janet Jackson.

Like literally going toe to toe with the Jacksons, this was a crossover she dreamed about, and she never got to see it.

By December, Dreaming of You had gone double platinum at two million copies. The album introduced millions to Selena and continues to do so while giving both newcomers and devoted fans a tantalizing taste of what could have been. Okay, We kicked off talking about Selena by listing all the different ways people have connected to her music.

The og fans, the nineties kids who learned her story from the movie, and the little zoomers who love to cosplay Selena.

Selena's legacy was cut short. There's like no if ands or buts about it. But among the millions of listeners who fell in love with her is a treasure trove of artists caring her legacy forward.

So what better way to celebrate Selena than by celebrating those artists keeping her alive in their own music Exactly.

Someone that I think always gets a lot of accolades for this but does it in her own very unique way is Destiny Neveda. Now, if you guys have not heard of her, she is a Latin Grammy nominee. She's a two time the Hanno Music Award singer. And I think her voice is very like traditional te Hanne like, it's very Selena. The sound is spot on, like it's exactly what you expect it to be.

You know, I agree with you. I feel like it is. And you know how Selena has a snarling to it, she kind of doesn't do that so much. I think it's a little bit more commercial hers Destiny. It's definitely a sound that is a little bit easier to hear because it's not like tumble and rumble. Do you know what I mean?

I do I totally get that. I mean, I think, you know, for Destiny, I would say I mean, she's got like super strong ties aside from just the sound. Like, yes, Tusine's mom was friends with Selena and like they used to play music with her. So like she's a baby and obviously she's grown up with music in her family, but they actually have like actual connections to that family,

You know, there's this new there's a singer out here. Her name is Snow the Product. And the reason I wanted to look her up and all this stuff is because she has Selena tattoos and mentioned Selena eating pizza in one of her songs called bet that I Will. I don't want to compare her to Cardi B. Because I mean, she is Mexican and she kind of has a little bit of a Chola voice in a way that you know how Cardi B has kind of like an East Coast Yes, so her rap is really cool.

I'm adding her to my list. Another one that I think people always call out to me is Estevie, who was also like a new person for me because she's very like gen Z. But if you like Cumbia, like she is the Cumbia queen.

She is. But I feel like she kind of sings it in a very kind of softer way, you know, very like modern. I feel like it's like a little like her voice is a little dreamier instead of being so commercial.

I just think she's having such a moment because I think you're obviously with you know, fesl Pluma, You're seeing like this massive explosion and almost like renaissance for very traditional regional Mexican music. So a lot of these artists are kind of pushing these regional styles to the forefront, whereas Selena did that. She already did that in the nineties, right, but now we're seeing it come back. So it is

I knew you were going to bring Yes.

I love Casey Muskrats her new album is you Guys Anyway? Casey saying it during like Christmas karaoke. So again, Selena has touched so many of these like younger female artists in a way that we can't even began to sum up in one short episode, right, and we could go on and on and on and on and do like multiple episodes.

Two hours right, this.

Is a five hour Becoming an Icon. But I think the best way that you and I can wrap up this show, this episode of our the Hannu Icon, is to do a little gomlay.

Is this I kind of don't know the other part to that, I'm gonna get.

Sued anyway, all right, guys, Well, next time on Becoming an Icon on the Spirit of the Sixties survives in Carlos Santana. Becoming an Icon is presented by Sonoro and Iheart's Michael Duda podcast Network. Listen to Becoming an Icon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast