Word: selena
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WHEN A.B. QUINTANILLA talks about his sister Selena, the Tex-Mex music star murdered last March, allegedly by the former president of her fan club, his voice breaks with emotion. "I produced all of Selena's Latin stuff, all her successful stuff, and I'll never run into a vocalist like her ever again, or have a sister like her," he says. "That's what gives me an empty feeling--losing her first as a sister and then as a vocalist...
...haven't lost her as a vocalist. On July 18, EMI Records will release Dreaming of You, a half English, half Spanish pop album that was completed after Selena's death. The CD will undoubtedly bring her music to a far wider audience than she ever had when she was alive. That should not be surprising. The music world has long been fascinated with performers cut off in their prime; death, the old saying goes, is frequently a good career move...
...December, EMI will issue a Beatles boxed set with several new tunes, at least one featuring the voice of John Lennon, who died in 1980. Previously unreleased tracks of Lennon's singing are being combined with newly recorded vocals from the three surviving Beatles. On one cut of Selena's new album, her Spanish vocals have been lifted from a song released years earlier and mixed with new English-language vocals by the group Barrio Boyzz. Meanwhile, a posthumous "new" album by Jimi Hendrix, Voodoo Soup (MCA), recently arrived in stores. It features Hendrix, the guitar genius who died...
Posthumous albums can mean big money. The grunge band Nirvana sold more than 7 million copies of its Unplugged CD, released after the group's lead singer, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide last year. Selena's Spanish-language albums have sold 2.5 million copies since her death. Then there's the inevitable merchandising. The new retrospective album of reggae great Bob Marley, Natural Mystic, contains three full pages in the liner notes plugging "Bob Marley Official Merchandise," such as T shirts and knit caps. And continuing enthusiasm for Hendrix--he sold 3.5 million albums last year--has spawned a virtual cottage...
Much depends on the credibility and good faith of the people doing the resurrecting. In the case of the new Selena CD, her brother worked with Nancy Brennan, a vice president at EMI, in picking every song on the album and in selecting the producers who helped to complete them. "[Selena's] family members were her best friends," says Brennan. "Your legacy is much more protected when your family is in charge...