Selena Gomez & The Scene

Talking to Apple Music in early 2020, Selena Gomez said the point when her career really started to shift was when she shot the 2012 movie Spring Breakers. Even if she hadn’t spent the first part of her life as a Disney kid, the movie—guns, drugs, so on—would’ve been the kind of deep-end leap that pop stars tend to be conditioned away from. Selena Gomez is famous. But she’s also a survivor of fame, a candid chronicler of mental health whose best music—“Lose You to Love Me”, “Back to You”, Dance Again”—has brought a degree of frankness to mainstream pop that feels both refreshing and necessary. “I think that’s how I’ve continued to have a career,” Gomez said. “I’m very okay with speaking about myself. I think that’s truly what has sustained me. And I don’t do it purposefully, I do it because it’s necessary for me.” Born in 1992, Gomez grew up poor outside Dallas, making her way into the Disney machine in her mid-teens, becoming the most-followed—and probably most-scrutinised—person on Instagram by her early twenties. She started releasing music with her band The Scene in 2009, going solo in 2013 with Stars Dance. By 2015’s Revival, she’d taken greater control over both her image and songwriting, leaning into a comfortable dance-pop sound that didn’t chase trends. In 2020, she released Rare, an album on which she not only co-wrote every track but served as executive producer. She’d also taken a two-year break from social media—a career risk, but a personal necessity. “I was so much happier with just me, myself, how I looked, and that helped a lot,” Gomez told Apple Music. “I just needed to let my old self go.”