Review Summary: 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. Legitimately great songs (“Hands to Myself”, “Bad Liar”), absolute clunkers (“Same Old Love”, “Lose You to Love Me”), and guilty pleasures (“Come & Get It”, “Love You Like a Love Song”) exist in the same Selenamatic Universe with seemingly no rhyme or reason other than her being a rather convenient vessel to give them maximum reach. Again, it’s not a condemnation or an indictment on her -frankly, it’s impressive and hilarious that her popularity has continued to fall upward from this perceived indifference- but it does beg the question of what a Selena Gomez project with stakes would actually look like.
I Said I Love You First makes this hypothetical a reality, and the reality is surprisingly pretty good. For the most part, Selena keeps her eye on the ball thanks to the assistance from producer/fiance Benny Blanco, who whisks up some dreamy soundscapes that range from sexy and playful to genuinely moving to tell a tale that I can only assume* is a rough approximation of how they came to fall in love. This production is truly the glue that holds the project together, as the couple wisely choose to navigate this story by essentially playing dress up with some of the hottest sounds in the mainstream. “Younger and Hotter Than Me” is a cross between Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” and a Lana Del Rey ballad in the best way as it manages to capture not only their aesthetics, but their emotional proclivity as well (“waited outside your apartment/you used to come down for me/I used to feel like an angel/now I’m a dog on your leash”). “Sunset Blvd” takes more than a few cues from Sabrina Carpenter’s brand of playful sexuality to deliver playful dreampop that has the album’s most memorable moments with a prechorus that mimics
When Harry Met Sally’s diner scene (“Big, big, hard heart!”) and a bridge that is essentially JOI ASMR -it’s ridiculous and it works. “Bluest Flame” is quite literally just a Charli XCX song (borrowing quite liberally from “Pink Diamond”), and quite a good one at that as the song effortlessly transforms from robot acapella to an explosion of hyperpop goodness.
*
I just watched a recap of LEGO Bionicle’s story. I am tapped out on “lore.”
Selena and Benny wear a lot of hats throughout and most of them work -but not all. The album’s near-perfect pacing comes to nearly a complete halt post-”Bluest Fame” by having the album’s remaining six songs be comprised of four ballads, one foray into reggaeton, and a spoken word interlude (“Do You Wanna Be Perfect”) that is so unsubtle (and honestly confusing) that it nearly wraps back around to being compelling -
nearly. The ballads themselves are pretty okay, but scan as anonymous thanks to positioning them one after the other. The foray into reggaeton (“I Can’t Get Enough”) is head scratching not only from its placement being the only real break from the dimmed lights, but also sounding completely out of place on this project from the same sort of indifference that plagued Selena in the past.
It’s a disappointing turn for what is, on the whole, a pretty fun pop album that finally gives form and shape to what a Selena Gomez album could be. While the pacing issues and inclusion of some boring songs prevent
I Said I Love You First from being anything truly special, they don’t manage to stop it from being Selena Gomez’s strongest collection of songs to date.
