Rebekah Del Rio has passed away at age 57 in Los Angeles, with the cause of her death still unknown.
People always remember when Rebekah Del Rio sang “Llorando” in that haunting Club Silencio scene in Mulholland Drive; her voice echoes in your mind long after the movie ends, especially since she belts out the Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” while Naomi Watts and Laura Harring sit in the dark, red theater and cry along. As the song goes on, Rebekah suddenly collapses onstage, showing the whole thing was a dramatic lip sync, but somehow it feels even more real.
Before all this, she grew up in San Diego with Mexican, Italian, and Sephardic roots, singing country music and performing “Crying” a cappella at shows—she once said, “I would sing it a cappella because, oftentimes, the band would have a hard time with some of the chord changes,” in an interview with The Guardian in 2022. The loss of Selena in 1995 hit her so hard that she decided to record “Llorando” in Spanish for everyone who was grieving.
Fans sometimes wish we could hear her sing live just one more time.
Del Rio was living in Nashville, writing songs and recording, when her agent called and set up a meeting with David Lynch. She visited Lynch’s house, and he asked her to sing “Llorando” right then and there—secretly recording her performance. She later joked the whole meeting lasted “one and a half songs, two cigarettes, a cup of coffee,” and Lynch told her, “Ding dang, Rebekah Del Rio, that was aces.”
When it came time to film Mulholland Drive, Lynch wanted her to lip sync to her own track, but she just couldn’t fake it. “I say, ‘I can’t do that, I can’t mouth my own track. No! You won’t get the vibrato, I’m singing along,’” she remembered. So instead, she sang live to Laura Harring and Naomi Watts for every take, letting them feel the music for real.
Sometimes, the way people leave their mark is totally unexpected—like a song that makes everyone cry or a scene you can’t forget, even if you want to.
