R.I.P. Rebekah Del Rio, "Llorando" singer from Mulholland Drive
Del Rio worked with Lynch again on Twin Peaks: The Return.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
Rebekah Del Rio, the singer who performed “Llordando,” a moving, Spanish-language rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” in a pivotal scene from Mulholland Drive, died June 23 in her Los Angeles home. Variety confirmed the singer’s death through the Los Angeles coroner’s office, but no additional details have been shared as of this writing. She was 57.
Del Rio and David Lynch shared a CAA agent, Brian Loucks, who introduced the two artists at at the director’s recording studio. Del Rio had previously landed a country record deal in Nashville based on her recording of “Llorando,” which she called “THE song” in a 2018 interview with 25 Years Later. Lynch asked Del Rio to perform the song during their initial 20-or-so minute meeting, and secretly recorded her while she sang. In the interview, Del Rio recalled thinking, “Wow that was a whirlwind, that was like a David Lynch film, like what the heck just happened you know?” in the aftermath of the meeting, but went back to her normal life not thinking much of it.
Shortly after, however, she got a call from Loucks to tell her that Lynch was “obsessed” with the song and “cannot stop listening to it.” That performance inspired the legendary Club Silencio scene, which Lynch originally wrote while he was plotting Mulholland Drive as a TV series. It’s also one of the first scenes he shot when he decided to convert the project into a feature film, Rolling Stone reports.