Music review
I Said I Love You First
Selena Gomez is hot for Benny Blanco — and she’s not afraid to moan it.
On their new joint album, “I Said I Love You First” (out Friday), the pop star lusts after her music producer fiancé, shedding any remnants of her good-girl image as a former Disney darling while chronicling the couple’s nearly two-year love story.
After a sappy, spoken-word introduction thanking her support system, a pre-Blanco Gomez finds herself brokenhearted on “Young and Hotter Than Me,” a plaintive Lana Del Rey-esque piano ballad about a philandering ex she wishes she “never loved” (ahem, Justin Bieber).
And yet, nature takes its course and Gomez, 32, ends up falling back into bed with her former boyfriend “one last time” on the mostly Spanish-language mesmerizer “Ojos Tristes” before Blanco, 37, enters the picture.
“Now I found another hand to hold,” she declares on the boppy kiss-off “Don’t Wanna Cry,” a career highlight and early contender for song of the summer.
Gomez and Blanco get hot and heavy quickly, with the tongue-in-cheek “Sunset Blvd” documenting their carnal first date.
“I can’t wait to hold it, to hold that / Big, big / Hard …,” she chants before pausing for suspense then finally shouting, “Heart!” (Thank God.)
Evidently, the date ended well because Gomez gets even friskier with Blanco on “Cowboy,” a breathy ditty about riding him like a, well, you get the picture, and “Bluest Flame,” an overly AutoTuned, Charli XCX-influenced mishmash in which the lovebirds “go all night.”
Gomez finds Blanco so magnetic, in fact, that she claims to have effortlessly wiped any lingering memories of her “embarrassing” past love on the savage slow burn “How Does It Feel to Be Forgotten.”
By “I Can’t Get Enough,” the pair are so intoxicated with each other that they feel like the only two people in the world (and perhaps the only two who can stand the song’s maddening hook).
“I Said I Love You First” allows Gomez — who last released an album in 2020 — to take center stage again as a pop princess, while Blanco stays in the background and focuses on the project’s sometimes stellar, other times chaotic production.
The Grammy nominees close the curtain on a vulnerable note, with Gomez telling Blanco on the voicemail-like “Scared of Loving You” that breaking up would destroy her.
It’s a good thing these two were made for each other, then.
