Selena Gomez was reborn in 2015, when she released her second solo record, Revival. It was the pop star’s beginning of a transition away from her Disney sound, towards songwriting that better represented the crossroads at which she found herself. Revival delved into her ever expanding sexuality, power, and interest in telling her own stories. Gomez worked some of the best producers and writers to help translate her experiences.
Over the next five years, Selena’s journey became more challenging as she faced serious struggles with anxiety, depression, and chronic illness that sidelined her music career and threatened her life. In 2017, she underwent a risky kidney transplant due to complications from the autoimmune disease lupus, Gomez shared a series of genre-curious singles including the Talking Heads-sampling “Bad Liar.” Then most followed woman on Instagram logged off, removing herself from the public eye once more, and began to focus on herself.
Selena Gomez’s brand new album Rare has been touted as her most personal album yet, and it gets intimate on the records emotional centerpiece, the lead single “Lose You To Love Me” which was produced by Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas. The first single became Gomez’s first Billboard No. 1. Rare is the 27-year-old’s most cohesive record to date. It feels spiritually in tune with the woman who once cheerfully told Vogue that people would be surprised to learn how much she loves “depressing things.”
The opener and title track is a “quiet but impactful self-love anthem”[ with lyrics discussing “the wavering interests of a lover” and the singer realizing “her love interest isn’t valuing her in the way she deserves”. Its sound has been referred to as “backing vocals and instrumentals muffled as if the whole thing has been dunked underwater”. “Dance Again” is a blend of multiple genres, including funk, dance, electro, and electropop. It encompasses an “infectious” and “mellifluous” melody, “Cure-like” bass, “fuzzy” synths and a “walloping disco bassline”. Co-written with Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter, “Look at Her Now”, an upbeat dance-pop and electropop track which explores “being better off without the bad ones” and getting over the end of a relationship. Produced by The Monsters and the Strangerz with Jon Bellion, “Vulnerable” is a “warm” disco and electropop record with a “moody synth groove” and elements of italo disco and tropical house.
There are bigger, catchier bangers and there is more frivolous fun to be had in Selena Gomez’s back catalog, but this is undoubtedly the album with the strongest, most cohesive point of view of her career. It’s the most authentic to who she is as an artist, with her own taste, in her own words — by far. And in a way, she’s only just begun hitting her stride as herself.
Rating: ★★★★☆
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