Rabos verdes literally translates to "green tails", but it's a colorful Mexican idiom for lecherous or dirty old men. The phrase compares them to old parrots who can still talk but are no longer in their prime.
In the song, Selena comically brushes off unwanted attention, singing "le digo que no me caen los viejos rabos verdes" (I tell him I don't like dirty old men). Learning this playful slang is a fun way to understand the sassy personality in the lyrics and add some authentic flavor to your Spanish!
Selena turns apartment living into a hilarious, relatable romantic comedy in this bright Tejano track. Every trip down the hallway is an obstacle course of unwanted attention: an unwashed guy catcalling her, a boring neighbor holding her up, and an older creep she brushes off by calling him a rabo verde (an old lecher or dirty old man) with the blunt line "no me caen los viejos rabos verdes" ("I don't like dirty old men"). None of them matter, though, because she only has eyes for the dream guy stepping out of the elevator: "El chico del apartamento cinco doce" ("The guy from apartment 512"). He makes her tongue-tied, her heart jump, and leaves her secretly writing love letters that she never actually sends.
The real punchline arrives when she finally works up the nerve to knock on his door and confess her feelings. Her goosebumps instantly turn to heartbreak when a blonde woman (una güera) opens the door instead. Just as she thinks it is all over, the woman asks, "¿Buscabas a mi hermano?" ("Were you looking for my brother?"). It is a charming twist that wraps up one of Selena's funnest stories, full of neighborhood humor and everyday crush awkwardness.
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez grew up in Lake Jackson, Texas, fronting her family's band, Selena y Los Dinos, with her brother A.B. writing the songs and playing bass and her sister Suzette on drums. She was raised speaking English, and her father drilled the Spanish lyrics into her phonetically, line by line, years before she was fluent in the language she sold millions of records in.
Tejano was a men's business when she took it over: she won the Tejano Music Award for Female Vocalist of the Year nine years running from 1987, and Selena Live! took the 1994 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album. "Como la Flor", from 1992's Entre a Mi Mundo, is the song attached to her name more than any other, and Amor Prohibido (1994) put four singles at number one on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart, among them "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom" and "No Me Queda Más". She was shot and killed in Corpus Christi on March 31, 1995, aged 23, by the former president of her fan club. Dreaming of You, the English-language crossover album she had been recording, was released that August and entered the Billboard 200 at number one.