Nearly 30 years after her death, a tape with a rare recording of Selena Quintanilla has been unearthed. On Sunday (Dec. 31), a tape surfaced on eBay with what appears to be an unreleased Coca-Cola commercial sung by the late Tejano singer.
In the snippet shared by the business, Quintanilla is heard passionately singing about “the one and only feeling” of Coca-Cola over what can only be described as a very ‘90s pop beat.
The recording is listed by Nice Vintage Pickups, a family-owned business in Ashburn, VA, that typically sells hard-to-find hip-hop tapes, records, and other memorabilia on eBay.
An associate for Nice Vintage Pickups tells Remezcla that the tape came from a friend who once worked for the Hip-Hop and Rap department at Capitol EMI, Quintanilla’s record label from 1989 until her untimely death in 1995.
“Unfortunately, he passed away in 2000, and his girlfriend at the time had to sell off his storage before it went to auction,” the associate says. “I’ve had this for over 20 years and just not got [sic] around to listening to it. It’s the only Selena tape I have.”
The employee also says that the recording only has a one-minute song in English with “some Spanish sprinkled in.” The old tape is undated and merely marked “Top 40,” likely for radio broadcast purposes. But based on this writer’s deep knowledge of all things Selena, he’d place the raspy texture of her vocals somewhere between 1989 and 1991.
It’s not clear if this recording had ever been aired on radio stations in the U.S., but it’s the first time this particular commercial has appeared online. Included in the eBay listing is a CD copy of the full one-minute commercial, just in case the buyer doesn’t own a tape deck. As of this writing, the highest bid on the tape has reached $305. The auction is scheduled to end on Friday evening.
Remezcla has reached out to the Quintanilla family and other individuals who worked on the singer’s Coca-Cola campaigns for comment. This story may be updated.
According to Texas Monthly, Quintanilla signed a one-year contract with the soft drink giant when she was merely 17 years old. She would be featured in English and Spanish-language ad campaigns in Latine media markets in the U.S. just before she was catapulted into stardom.
In 2022, the Quintanilla family partnered with Warner Records to release Moonchild Mixes, a remix album that used pitch-shifting technology to age Selena’s teenage voice on recordings made in the late ‘80s.