...before she died? Was she well known throughout the nation/world? I had never heard of her before her death. I remember my mother telling me that Selena had died and I ask, "Who?" I have heard some people say that the only reason she is well known today is because her father and brother have exploited her death in order to make money and use the guise of keeping her memory alive as a way to accomplish this. Is this true? This is not my opinion, I am only stating what I have heard.
I live in the Rio Grande Valley (just minutes away from the Texas-Mexico border), and I'm living in the heart of Selena fandom. Every anniversary of her death, the radio stations are playing her music nonstop. There's still a lot of fans down here. She was very famous here.
I am in the same boat as you, I don't think I had ever heard of her while she was alive. But maybe more a couple of years or so after the movie came out. But I would think that the she was most famous in Texas, since you look at the movie, that is where pretty much her concerts were at. I mean yeah, she did a concert in Mexico. And there was mention of a tour in Californa, but anywhere else, I don't think she was famous at all. If she wasn't killed at all, would see have gone on to being famous? We will never know that, but maybe she might be a little more famous today, is because of this movie? Plus other then maybe like Star Search, she really hadn't performed at any talk shows like David Letterman, or Jay Leno. That maybe would had made her more well known, to people outside of Texas. Yea, I know that she was born and rasied there, and plus of the fact if she had gotten to go other places, maybe she could had been more famous, then she really was.
Just because you didn't know who she was doesn't "she wasn't famous at all." It just means she wasn't universally famous. She was famous in some parts of the world and not in others.
I was residing in TX prior to her death and actually recall her and her family (brother/sister) performing at local clubs in my town. This of course was yrs prior to her recording her English record and then death.
Had a friend at work ask just like you are doing about if I considered her famous and I would tell her how I saw her at the club but was more interested in hanging out with her sister (the drummer) who seemed more out going with the crowd.
Even in the movie there was a scene where the guy is telling the father that men singers get paid more and are noticed more which I found to be true. Cuz when she did perform it was not like we were crowding the stage to see her. We basically sat at our tables or were in back of club playing pool.
PPL claimed (during movie and after) that she would have became the next Madonna or in her case more like Gloria E. But I personally don't believe so ~ think her album would have turned a few heads but it was her techno that really got to ppl and I felt if she was still alive she would have rtnd to Spanish/Techno music.
I felt that (sadly) her death was her glorified fame. Especially for her father who (YES) I believe was the backdrop to why Yolanda turned on Selena.
i did not know about her intill after her death, i did enjoy some of her music and she had a very wonderful voice to and even some of her spanish music to had a nice beat to it, i am half hispanic but i do not speak any spanish worth a damn, but it was and still is good music.
I agrre, I think her family exploits her in the same manner Elvis is exploited.
Selena was wll known along the Tex-Mex border and throughout South America but she was not an international star or an icon. Her death did catapolt into international fame, mostly through the efforts of her family. She was well enough known to get her murder and the coming trial reported in the papers but I don't think her fame would have grown or her CDs sold if not for her family's efforts.
I don't think she would have been as huge as Gloria was - very few Hispanics made it then and she would have had to have waited for the Latin Explosion of 1999. Her English Cd was long in the making and I think she would have done as Jon Secada does - do English and Spanish CDs. I don't think she would have stayed strictly and English language singer. Her fan base and bread and butter was in the Latino market. None of the singers from the 1999 explosion have stuck around fame wise - maybe Enrique Iglesias - but he still records Spanish as well as English albums.
I was really young and just getting into music when she was killed. I only found out about her from watching the movie shortly after it appeared on HBO. At the end I realized it was based on a real story when they did the fade in. I grew up in the south east so I dont think she had made broad appeal down here yet. I dont think she had reached superstardom out east yet.
As a native Texan, I was well aware of Selena's presence in the music world. She was only just finishing her English cross-over album featuring songs like "Dreaming of You" and "I Could Fall in Love". I remember, after her death, the pop radio stations in Dallas played them nonstop. I was very little when this all happened, but I very much remember hearing about her death and knowing a couple of her Spanish songs.
I don't know about her family exploiting her death for the sake of making money, but I know she was very revered in the Mexican-American community. She would have become something huge, I believe, had she not met her death in March of '95. I think, in a lot of cases where a tragic murder has happened, a family will do almost anything to keep their loved one alive in their hearts. For someone with such a promising career and a devoted fan base like Selena, it wasn't difficult to see where her story was going. I'd hate to think of it as exploitation, though. =/
"The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me."
I'm like you. I had never heard of her until she was murdered.
I watched the movie recently. Part of the story is how she and her group and their audience were a subset of the U.S. national music scene. Even the Grammy she won was for a subset of popular music. However, where she might have gone/achieved if she had not been murdered--that's anyones guess. I think her family supported this film because she was robbed of her future.
I think there are some good viewpoints but another way to look at it is simple numbers.
This is a list of the Billboard 200 Peak Chart Positions for Selena's albums:
n/a n/a 97 79 64 29
What does that tell you? Trolls try to act as if she'd never had been famous if not for her being shot and killed. In reality it's pretty fair to assume that had she not been, her first English album would have charted well, most likely better than 29th, especially with her ability to promote the album.
As for the other part. Again, numbers. Somewhere around two dozen albums released after her death. It's possible her father was used to putting out a lot of albums and had a lot of material, and wanted to get her music out to the fans. At that point they were putting out somewhere around an album per year, to all of a sudden do nothing would have been the hardest thing for her family to do.