Google Honors Mexican-American Singer Selena with Doodle

This is What’s Trending Today…

Selena Quintanilla was known to millions of fans in North and Central America by her first name, Selena.

She was a successful Mexican-American singer, born in Texas in 1971.

Her first recording, also called “Selena,” came out on October 17 in 1989.

Selena released a number of future records before she was murdered in 1995.

One of the albums had a song called “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” and that is the song that provides the soundtrack for the Google Doodle that came out on Tuesday.

The doodle can be seen by Google users in the United States, most of Central and South America and India.

If you do not live in one of those areas, you can access the doodle by visiting the Google Doodle archive or on YouTube.

The doodle is an animated video showing the grown-up Selena performing the song and a young Mexican-American girl singing along in her bedroom. The girl sings into a hairbrush instead of a microphone while dancing on her bed.

The video lasts for about 90 seconds, and it shows the girl and her family going through different experiences with Selena’s music in the background. At the end, the viewer realizes that the young girl grew up to become the successful musician.

The idea for the doodle came from Perla Campos, a marketing executive for the Google Doodle team. Campos wrote an essay to go along with a doodle.

She said “watching Selena taught me that being Latina was a powerful thing, and that with hard work and focus, I could do whatever I set my mind to.” Campos called Selena “a role model and a hero.”
According to Billboard.com, Campos worked with Selena’s family to get the details of the animation just right.

Thanks to the doodle, Selena was a trending topic on both Twitter and YouTube on Tuesday.

Alex Medina is a designer and music producer. He called Selena “la reina,” which means “queen” in Spanish. He called the animation “amazing.”

Comedian Dani Fernandez used Twitter to write that she thought she “was not going to cry today.” Then she saw the Google Doodle. She posted four “crying face” emojis.

And that’s What’s Trending Today.

I’m Lucija Millonig.

Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

Did you know about Selena before this Google Doodle? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

soundtrack - n. the sounds and especially the music recorded for a movie

doodle - v. to draw something without thinking about what you are doing

viewer - n. a person who sees or looks at something

Latina - n. a woman or girl who was born in or lives in South America, Central America, or Mexico or a woman or girl in the U.S. whose family is originally from South America, Central America, or Mexico

animation - n. a way of making a movie by using a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of objects (such as puppets or models) that are slightly different from one another and that when viewed quickly one after another create the appearance of movement

emoji - n. playful designs of faces used in electronic messages and web pages