The original Broadway recording of “Hamilton” by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Vicente Fernández’s enduring ranchera song “El Rey” and Freddy Fender’s breakthrough song “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” have been inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.
The trio of hits are among the 25 recordings and albums selected Wednesday for preservation at the nation’s audio history library.
"Hamilton's" inclusion in the registry comes a decade after the record-breaking musical premiered on Broadway. Miranda's reimagined story of Alexander Hamilton through the lens of rap and hip-hop and starring performers of color became a cultural phenomenon.
It won the Tony Award for best musical in 2015 and a Pulitzer Prize for drama. The show's album is the best-selling original cast recording in history and won a Grammy for best musical theater album.
“I think the National Recording Registry is an artistic version of a nation’s conversation with itself,” Miranda said in a statement. From the beginning of recorded sound to the present, "I feel incredibly honored that ‘Hamilton’ is a point in that timeline."
Fernández’s interpretation of José Alfredo Jiménez’s “El Rey” is one of the most recognizable versions of one of the most famous Mexican songs in the world.
Recorded in 1973, Fernández’s version went on to become a hit emblematic of his enduring career lifting up mariachi music. Even after Fernández died in 2021, "El Rey" remains a constant in music playlists across generations of Mexican Americans and Latinos.
Fender's bilingual country hit “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” became an instant classic when it was released in 1975. It reached No. 1 on both the Hot Country Songs chart and the Billboard Hot 100, according to Billboard.
The milestone showed that a Mexican American artist from Texas, with an emotive voice, had an innate ability to connect with bicultural audiences who loved listening to Latin and mainstream American music genres. Fender died in 2006 at age 69.
Albums from Elton John, Miles Davis, Tracy Chapman and Mary J. Blige, as well as the singles “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” from Helen Reddy and Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the film “Titanic,” are some of the other recordings added to the registry this week — bringing the total number of inducted titles to 675.
Only 29 of them feature Latin artists, making up less than 5% of all inducted titles, according to Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, who serves as the vice chair of diversity and inclusion at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
"I am proud to see that these three iconic recordings from iconic artists are rightfully taking their place as legends in American music history,” Castro said in a statement. "Today’s announcement represents the Library of Congress’ growing recognition that music by Latino musicians has shaped the soundtrack of American life.”
