- Who
- Selena
- What
- 97 total number
- Where
- United States ()
- When
Amor Prohibido (“Forbidden Love”) by Selena (USA, b. Selena Quintanilla) spent 97 weeks at No.1 on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Albums chart between 9 April 1994 and 27 May 2017. Released by EMI Latin on 13 March 1994, Selena’s fourth studio album was the biggest seller on the Regional Mexican Albums chart for three years in a row (1994-96) and returned to the top of the countdown in 2017 after a rule change meant that catalogue albums were permitted to chart alongside current releases.
The album produced the singles “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom”, “No Me Queda Más”, “Fotos y Recuerdos” and the title track, which between them spent 27 weeks at No.1 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Tracks (now Hot Latin Songs) chart in 1994-95.
The nine-week chart-topper “Amor Prohibido” was Hot Latin Tracks’ year-end No.1 for 1994, an achievement Selena repeated the following year when “No Me Queda Más” led a year-end 1-2-3 for the artist ahead of “Fotos y Recuerdos” and “Tú Sólo Tú” (from her fifth and final studio album Dreaming of You). “I Could Fall in Love” (also from Dreaming of You) was at No.5.
Amor Prohibido was certified 36x multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 13 November 2017, for US shipments of 2.16 million units. It’s the second-highest-ranked album on the RIAA's Diamante Awards program for Latin albums and singles; Selena’s follow-up album, Dreaming of You (59x multi-platinum, for US shipments of 3.54 million units), leads the way.
As of 2017, Amor Prohibido had sold more than 1.24 million copies in the US and 2.5 million copies worldwide. The album was described as having “revolutionized Tejano music in the ‘90s, fusing the genre with blends of hip-hop, ranchera, cumbia and electronic beats” (Billboard, 14 March 2019).
Amor Prohibido crowned Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart for 20 non-consecutive weeks from 11 June 1994, and it was her first entry on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, where it peaked at No.29 on 6 May 1995 (following her death on 31 March that year).
The success of albums such as Amor Prohibido and Dreaming of You, combined with her ability to bring Tejano/Latin music into the mainstream, were contributory factors to Selena winning a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards on 14 March 2021.
