At last, our long national nightmare is over: Selena Gomez has returned with new music!
Following a few days of exciting build-up, the singer released “Lose You to Love Me” at midnight on Wednesday (October 23), and it’s a predictably raw and emotional affair. Produced by FINNEAS (Billie Eilish’s brother and collaborator), the piano-driven ballad finds Gomez closing a painful chapter of her life and finding peace in the process. “We always go into it blindly / I needed to lose you to find me / This dancing was killing me softly / I needed to hate you to love me,” she sings. The accompanying video is fittingly stark and intimate, with Sel singing straight to the camera and smiling by the end of the cathartic tune.
On YouTube, Gomez wrote, “This song was inspired by many things that have happened in my life since releasing my last album. I want people to feel hope and to know you will come out the other side stronger and a better version of yourself.”
Prior to releasing her new single, Gomez teased fans with a series of childhood photos and cryptic clues posted over the past week. Each one was accompanied by a poetic caption like, “We always go into it blindly,” and “You promised the world,” which we now know were sneaky lyric previews.
“Lose You To Love Me” may be the first taste of Gomez’s as-yet-untitled third album, which would mark her first full-length project since 2015’s Revival. Selenators are itching for that Revival follow-up, and the excitement is definitely warranted — after all, she’s been hinting at a new era for a long, long, long time. It seemed like the new album might finally arrive in 2017; that was the year she dropped “Bad Liar” and “Fetish” in quick succession, followed by the Marshmello-assisted “Wolves.” And even though she teased that an “epic album” was coming “very soon” that December, nothing ever materialized. She did, however, reemerge a few times in 2018 with a handful of collaborations, as well as the solo hit “Back to You.”
Now that she’s returned from her (well-deserved) break from the spotlight and seems to be in a healthy and happy place, we’re glad to see she’s back on track with new music. Back in June, the 27-year-old revealed that she’s “actually done” with her new album while on The Tonight Show.
“I have to do, like, a few finishing things with it, but I’m just relieved,” she told host Jimmy Fallon. “It took me four years now to even feel at a good place with this album, and it’s just because I had such huge moments that happened in my life personally that [it was like] how was I going to capture that and how was I actually going to feel good about what I was saying? So, I kept going and I’m relieved now.”
It’s good to (finally) have you back, Sel!
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