Rare Video of Selena Quintanilla Singing 'Bidi Bidi Bom Bom' in English Has Surfaced

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Just days after the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History released rare footage of a 1994 interview with Selena Quintanilla, another video surfaced. In the latest video from 1993, the beloved late singer is in her hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas performing her hit single “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” but with a twist: She’s performing the Spanish-language song in English.

In English, the love song had an entirely different title, “Itty Bitty Bubble,” and subject matter. The clip shows the Grammy-winner singing about being a fish: “If I had just one wish, I would like to be a fish.”

Take a look at the video below:

According to Texas Monthly, the song was created by accident during one of Quintanilla’s sound checks. Her husband and the band’s guitarist Chris Perez and her brother A.B. Quintanilla were riffing on different sounds when the Tejano queen joined in with “itty bitty bubbles.” One of the backup singers Pete Astudillo remembers the Mexican-American star singing, “If I was a fish, under the sea, I would swim, swim, swim to you,” to the beat of her hit song. Astudillo eventually went on to pen the lyrics, changing the focus from water and making it about the heartbeat of a girl in love: “Bidi bidi bom bom.”

The single dominated the charts at number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs for four consecutive weeks. Many singers have done rendition of the popular cumbia track, including Selena Gomez, who added it to her compilation album For You.

The track was featured on Google Doodle’s animated cartoon honoring Quintanilla on Tuesday, which marked the anniversary of her first studio album release. After the search engine’s tribute, fans played her songs on Pandora nearly half a billion times in one day. The streaming platform also revealed that “Selena station” adds went up 382 percent.