Album Review: I Said I Love You First by Selena Gomez & benny blanco

A willingness to wear many hats and Benny Blanco's dreamy production help usher in Selena's best project yet. I am not going to pretend that I am an expert on the subject, but I have never really gotten the impression that Selena Gomez really cares all that much about making music. That's not to say that her actual music is bad, but her enthusiasm (or, lack thereof) seems completely disconnected from the quality of the product itself.

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The engaged power couple struggle to strike the right balance on their collaborative record Of all the millennial Disney Channel popstars, Selena Gomez's trajectory is perhaps the most erratic - she had a rebellious, wild phase which was dwarfed by Miley Cyrus, she scored two sizeable hits that aren't well remembered today, then she featured on one of the biggest songs of the decade so far. I Said I Love You First is her first English-language album since 2020, fiancé Benny Blanco is at her side and romance is on the agenda. Lead single Call Me When You Break Up pairs chugging guitars with Gomez and Gracie Abrams' bit-crushed pleas, the latter putting in a more showy performance while the former finds closure in the song's final section.

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I Said I Love You First, the title of singer and actress Selena Gomez’s fourth studio album, is a blunt statement, hinting at happiness and conflict. A listener might wonder, “Why did one partner say, ‘I love you’ first?” Did the other hesitate? While promoting the record, Gomez and fiancé Benny Blanco, her main collaborator, projected domestic bliss. On The Tonight Show, they come across as media-trained to be charmingly opposite: Blanco verbose and likeable, Gomez refined and thoughtful.

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On paper, this shoudn't work. Pop is littered with saccharine love duets, the charts strewn with mawkish displays of sentimentality. So when news that Selena Gomez and benny blanco had combined to construct an album documenting their relationship , the cynics of the internet gathered in force. In its execution, however, 'I Said I Love You First' is a million miles away from those epithets - a trueful, sometimes moving, often joyous account of a relationship, the sheer honesty of the songwriting means that it engages at every turn.

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