09/03/2026
Little Miss Dynamite Goes Hollywood: Shelly Lares Takes a Lifetime of Music to the Movies
Shelly Lares has been making music since she was 10 years old.
More than four decades later, there are not many corners of the business she hasn’t touched.
Singer. Songwriter. Musician. Producer. Record-label owner. Mentor. Educator.
And now, Hollywood.
This week, two very different films are putting Shelly’s work in front of audiences far beyond the Tejano world — one with that unmistakable voice front and center, and another showing what she can do behind the scenes.
Say a Little Prayer, starring Vannessa Vasquez and Luis Fonsi, opens with Shelly’s rendition of the Nancy Sinatra classic “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
Then there is The American Coyote. For that project, Shelly stepped further behind the curtain, writing and producing music for the soundtrack.
For someone else, two movie projects arriving at nearly the same time might look like a reinvention.
For Shelly Lares, it feels more like an extension of everything she has spent her life becoming.
Tejano fans have known “Little Miss Dynamite” for decades. They know the voice, the records, the performances and the powerhouse presence that helped make her one of the genre’s most enduring artists.
But Shelly was never simply the woman standing in front of the microphone.
Through ShellShock Records 3, she built her own place in the business as a producer, label owner and artist developer.
And over the last five years, Shelly has increasingly used that platform to produce and help bring new artists to the forefront of Tejano, country and Americana music.
Her work behind the scenes has become another extension of the career she built in front of the microphone — developing artists, shaping records, helping new voices find their footing and using decades of experience to give the next generation a stronger start.
That commitment to the next generation also reaches into the classroom.
Shelly serves as an Artist in Residence at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she shares more than four decades of real-world music-industry experience with students and helps prepare young artists for both the creative side of the business and everything that comes with building a career.
It fits who Shelly is.
Learn it. Live it. Reach back and teach it.
But there is another side of her life with music that never appears on a chart or an awards list.
For Shelly, music has also become a ministry.
As Music Activity Coordinator for Harmony Hospice Care in San Antonio, she brings music directly to patients and families during some of life’s most tender moments.
The same woman who has used her voice to fill dance halls and concert stages now uses that gift to bring comfort to someone sitting quietly in a hospice room.
That says something about the way Shelly sees the gift she was given.
Music can entertain.
Music can tell a story.
Music can teach.
Music can comfort.
Music can open doors.
And now, music is carrying her onto movie screens.
There is something almost poetic about one of those films being titled Say a Little Prayer.
Because Shelly Lares has done exactly that for so many people.
She has prayed for artists trying to find their way. Prayed for friends stepping into something new. Prayed with and for families walking through difficult seasons. Through her hospice ministry, she has carried that same faith into rooms where sometimes all that is left to offer is presence, music and prayer.
So maybe Say a Little Prayer is more than just the title of a film carrying her voice.
Maybe, in a small way, it reflects the woman behind it.
Shelly has spent a lifetime singing for people.
But just as often, she has been praying for them.
And that makes this Hollywood chapter feel especially fitting.
In Say a Little Prayer, audiences hear the performer.
In The American Coyote, they experience the songwriter and producer.
At ShellShock Records 3, artists find the producer and mentor.
At UTSA, students meet the teacher.
At Harmony Hospice Care, patients and families experience the ministry.
All of those women are Shelly Lares.
She has spent practically her entire life inside the music business, but instead of allowing more than 40 years of success to narrow her world, she keeps finding new places for her music to live — and new people to lift along the way.
This time, that place happens to be Hollywood.
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