Selena's Influential, Pathbreaking Posthumous Album Dreaming of You Turns 30 This Year

Among the many cruelties of Selena Quintanilla’s untimely death in 1995 is the realization that, had she lived, the Freeport native would have unquestionably been one of the leading lights of Latin music’s eventual ascent to the forefront of pop music.

As it is, the late Tejano star remains a pathbreaking, deeply consequential artist, and even a cursory glance at today’s cultural landscape bears traces of her savvy, multilingual influence.

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Selena’s fifth and final studio album, the posthumously released Dreaming of You, which arrived on July 18, 1995, less than three months after her tragic murder at the age of 23.

A remastered and remixed vinyl release — as well as a new, Dolby Atmos-enabled version — is out on July 18 to honor her legacy and introduce the music to a whole new generation. (Dreaming of You isn’t the only release getting spiffed up: Selena’s debut studio LP, Entre a Mi Mundo, was also remastered and re-released on vinyl in April.)

During a recent appearance on Sirius XM's "Hits Uno" channel, Selena’s sister, Suzette Quintanilla, talked about the Dreaming remaster and reissue, calling the new version “so crisp and so clean.”

“When Dreaming of You [first] came out, I didn’t care,” Quintanilla said in her Sirius XM interview, according to TejanoNation.net. “I was too much lost in my grief. I didn’t know day or night. I didn’t care about anything. And then, I learned to love it and to understand what it represents. It hurt for a very long time to be able to listen to this album. But as time went by, I understood. I embraced that this is what Sister left behind.”

The record proved extraordinarily fertile upon release. The first four singles (“I Could Fall in Love,” “Tu Solo Tu,” “Dreaming of You” and “Techno Cumbia”) all landed in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, with the title track peaking at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, a career best for Selena.

Dreaming of You also remains the best-selling Latin album in the United States, a list whose top 10 includes two other Selena LPs as well (Amor Prohibido at number two; Ones at number eight).

According to a contemporary Los Angeles Times article, Dreaming of You was the biggest first-week seller (moving 331,000 units) by a female artist since SoundScan began monitoring U.S. sales in 1992 and the first album by a Latin artist to debut at number one. (The L.A. Times also noted that the figure of 331,000 may be low, as smaller stores, untracked by SoundScan, could have sold copies, pushing the figure past 400,000.)

“We’re very happy and excited, but I obviously wish my daughter was here to share this with us — she’d be thrilled,” Abraham Quintanilla, Selena’s father, told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “English was her first language. I always knew she could succeed in this market.”

But, amid all the accolades and achievements, there’s also a profound sense of “what if,” particularly if you ask one of the album’s producers, Guy Roche. In April, he told the New York Post in an interview that Dreaming of You “took on a totally different character” in the wake of her sudden death.

“She had to pass away for the song [‘Dreaming of You’] to become what it is,” Roche told the Post. “You don’t know what would have come out of it if she hadn’t passed away, really.”

Roche, who produced the title track as well as “Captive Heart,” described himself as haunted by the star’s work on “Dreaming of You,” particularly in the aftermath of her murder.

“The label was making a lot of decisions about what songs she was going to do, but this was a song that she handpicked herself,” Roche told the Post. “She sang a cappella a bit in the control room, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ She really made the song her own. Honestly, the first couple of takes, I think the vibe, the intent was there, everything was great.

“She was singing this note at the end of the song ... and she holds that note forever, you know, and it was really traumatic for me,” Roche continued. “For months, I would visualize her singing that note. It’s really weird. It kind of affected the mood of the track. I was so, you know, in a blue mood. I don’t think it would’ve ended up like that if she was still alive. It was kind of eerie because we knew she was gone.”

Achievement and agony, trailblazing and tears — Selena's legacy and final studio album continue to resonate long after her unspeakably tragic passing. With the lovingly remastered release of Dreaming of You available now, that legacy will only continue to grow.