One week after releasing the glowing, disco-tinged pop single “Love On,” Selena Gomez has watched the tune’s optimism unfold throughout her fan base, and has loved witnessing a constructive private second translate to her listeners by way of a brand new single.
“It’s been beautiful,” Gomez tells Billboard about seeing the overall response to “Love On” following its Feb. 22 launch. “I attempt to not learn an excessive amount of into issues, however I feel the entire thought was to make a tune that felt good. I really feel like I’m in such a light-weight and pleased place, and that’s mirrored within the tune.”
Among the many admirers: a sure Oscar-winning actress that Gomez bumped into on the SAG Awards final month. “It was actually candy — Reese Witherspoon got here as much as me and stated the tune made her actually pleased and she or he cherished it,” Gomez recollects. “It was an enormous praise, I used to be glowing. These messages imply the world to me.”
“Love On” got here collectively final spring, when Gomez was “out and in of the studio” in April whereas capturing a movie in Paris. Feeling impressed by the Metropolis of Mild, in addition to content material inside her private {and professional} life, Gomez known as up longtime songwriting collaborator Julia Michaels and got here up with a lyrical idea without delay ethereal and flirtatious.
The standout lyric: “Why we conversin’ over this steak tartare?/ After we might be someplace apart from right here/ Makin’ out at the back of a automotive/ Or at the back of a bar?” Sure, Gomez has seen the flood of TikTok clips devoted to the “steak tartare” line, and says, “It brings me lots of pleasure.”
The music video for “Love On” captures the tune’s romantic effervescence, with French director Greg Ohrel surrounding Gomez with opulent events, ballet dancers and {couples} sucking face. “It’s so liberating to not fear about how I look,” Gomez says of filming the video, “and I simply wished it to really feel like I used to be having time. I didn’t want it to really feel very intense or dramatic. It was only a blast, and I wished it to convey that — I used to be genuinely that pleased.”
Gomez says that she “undoubtedly” has extra materials with the “Love On” artistic mind belief of Michaels, who has helped pen a few of her greatest pop hits, and manufacturing/songwriting collective The Monsters & Strangerz, which has labored with Gomez relationship again to her Stars Dance album in 2013.
“I really feel like I’ve moments the place I hit these strides, and we’re simply writing tune after tune, simply within the zone, and I have a tendency to do this after I’m with that dynamic group,” she says. “With Julia and I — for some cause the universe has put us in one another’s lives, as a result of we undergo so many related issues in our lives. It simply feels so good to have somebody who is aware of me, is aware of my voice rather well. That’s form of what I really feel just like the objective is after I work with that gang — I’m all the time like, ‘How can I make one other tune that feels kitschy and enjoyable?’”
Nevertheless, “Love On,” in addition to 2023 monitor “Single Quickly,” could not make the monitor record to her subsequent album, which is able to comply with her glorious 2020 full-length Uncommon. Much like how Gomez preceded Uncommon with a string of singles (together with “Dangerous Liar,” “It Ain’t Me” with Kygo and “Wolves” with Marshmello) that didn’t make the correct album’s monitor record — they had been later included on the Deluxe version — Gomez says that these latest singles may simply exist on their very own.
“I feel objectively, I wish to say that I’m working in direction of an album, however I don’t know if these songs can be on that undertaking,” she says. “I really feel like I’m brewing, and I’m within the technique of actually creating some nice songs, hopefully. I don’t know if they might match with what I’m gonna go together with.”
Nevertheless the monitor record shakes out, Gomez merely desires “to make an ideal album” in 2024, along with persevering with her movie work. She just lately returned to the Solely Murders within the Constructing set, as filming on season 4 of the hit Hulu sequence has gotten underway.
“I wish to proceed working in direction of my targets,” she says. “Within the appearing subject, I really feel like I haven’t even began. And with music, it’s all the time evolving. It’s such a therapeutic expertise for me.”
