Rebekah Del Rio, the singer best known for her climactic Club Silencio performance in David Lynch's 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive, has passed away. Variety reports that Del Rio was recently found dead in her Los Angeles home. No cause of death has been reported. She was 57.
Rebekah Del Rio was born in Chula Vista, California, and she moved to Los Angeles and then Nashville to pursue a singing career. In 1994, she recorded a country album called Nobody's Angel for Giant Records, but as far as I can tell it never came out. Del Rio and David Lynch shared an agent, and that agent introduced them in the mid-'90s. Lynch heard Del Rio sing "Llorando," her Spanish-language version of the Roy Orbison classic "Crying." In 2001, Lynch got Del Rio to sing an acappella version of "Llorando" at the climactic Club Silencio scene in Mulholland Drive. In the film, she faints mid-song, and her vocals keep going, suggesting that she'd never really been singing. During filming, however, Del Rio belted out the song, bringing full emotion to every take.
Del Rio also appeared in David Kelly's hallucinatory 2006 sci-fi film Southland Tales, singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in an apocalyptic scene. In 2011, she released her independent album Love Hurts Love Heals, and she co-wrote its title track with David Lynch. In 2017, Lynch included Del Rio in his final directorial work, Twin Peaks: The Return. With Moby joining her on guitar, Del Rio performed her song "No Stars" at the Roadhouse, the site of that series' many musical performances. Del Rio's voice also appeared on the soundtracks of films like Sin City and Man On Fire. Her son Phillip C. DeMars passed away in 2009 at the age of 23.
Below, check out some of Rebekah Del Rio's work, including that Mulholland Drive scene.
