It took the nightmare of Selena’s murder 30 years ago for her crossover hit “Dreaming of You” to become so deeply moving.
“She had to pass away for the song to become what it is,” Guy Roche exclusively told The Post. “It took on a totally different character.”
“You don’t know what would have come out of it if she hadn’t passed away,” he added. “I’m not sure the record would sound the same if she hadn’t passed away, really.”
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Just a few weeks before Selena was murdered on March 31, 1995, by her fan club president Yolanda Saldívar — who was denied parole on Friday — Roche went to the singer’s hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas, to record with the Queen of Tejano.
The ballad “Dreaming of You” — which had been previously offered to the “Crush on You” group The Jets — had been personally selected by the singer and became the title track of her big English crossover album, released posthumously in July 1995.
“The label was making a lot of decisions of what songs she was going to do, but this was a song that she handpicked herself,” Roche said. “She sang a cappella a bit in the control room, and I was like, ‘Wow.’ She really made the song her own.”
And the magic happened quickly. “Honestly, the first couple of takes, I think the vibe, the intent was there, everything was great,” Roche recalled. “But she did do a lot of takes. So I actually went back and listened diligently to all of them to see if there was something better. But most of it was from the first two takes.”
Roche also produced the track “Captive Heart” on Selena’s “Dreaming of You” album.
“She was excited about everything in English, because she didn’t get to sing a lot in English,” Roche said. “She was just amazing, fun, laughing and smiling and cracking jokes. She was just wonderful.”
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However, the mood — and meaning — of “Dreaming of You” changed when Roche was finishing production of the song after the singer’s shocking murder at just 23.
“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,” he said. “For months, I would visualize her singing that note. It’s really weird.”
The production of the song also took on a “darker” tone in the aftermath of Selena’s death.
“It kind of affected the mood of the track,” Roche noted. “I was so, you know, in a blue mood. I don’t think it would have ended up like that if she was still alive.”
In fact, the track was longer than originally intended, letting Selena fade out to the great beyond.
“It was more because she disappeared,” Roche said. “It was kind of eerie because we knew she was gone.”
