Yesterday (March 31) was the 26th anniversary of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez’s tragic death. The family of Selena posted tributes on their social media remembering the beloved Mexican-American singer who was killed by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar in 1995.
On Monday (March 30), E! Entertainment premiered an episode of their popular docuseries True Hollywood Story featuring Selena’s rise to fame, and her untimely death.
In the docuseries, Chris Pérez, Selena’s widower, details how he had to finish “Dreaming of You,” the title song for the album that was going to catapult the Tejana star into mainstream American pop stardom. “Them pushing play for me to record the guitar tracks and to hear her voice coming out of the speakers in the studio, it was just painful to go in and have to create parts and make them sound a certain way, when really inside you’re just dying,” he said.
The widower also spoke about living through his wife’s untimely death. “It was traumatic,” said Pérez in the docuseries. “It was the hardest thing up until that point that I had ever had to go through. I miss her face, her laughter. She was just an amazing soul, an amazing spirit.”
He says that his late wife taught him a lot about the simple things we take for granted. “I used to never tell people I love them or I miss them or just give them gifts just because,” he states. “I learned those things and many, many other things from her.”
The album of the same name was released four months after her death and became the first album by a Latin artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Since her death, Selena has had six albums posthumously released. Each reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart.