Selena Gomez surprises fans with 1st new album in 5 years — and it's with fiancé Benny Blanco

For Selena Gomez, making Emilia Pérez was so formative of an experience that she was “ready to just focus” on acting rather than releasing more music.

“It’s going to be very hard for me to ever go back to music after this,” Gomez said at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Feb. 9.

Less than a week later, on Feb. 13, Gomez surprised fans with the news that her upcoming joint album, I Said I Love You First, with fiancé Benny Blanco, would be released on March 21.

“I always trick you guys … my NEW album I Said I Love You First with my best friend @itsbennyblanco, is out on 3/21,” she wrote on Instagram. “Our first song, Scared of Loving You is out now. … We can’t wait to share this special project with you soon!”

On “Scared of Loving You,” Gomez sings about her anxieties of being in a relationship. “If I broke your heart, would you take me back?/ If I broke my arm, would you sign my cast?/ When I was young, I would love too fast. Hope I don’t repeat my past.”

Gomez co-wrote the track with Blanco and singer-songwriter-producer Finneas. Blanco and Finneas produced it.

First album in 5 years

While Gomez has continued to release singles over the years, including her 2024 Blanco-produced hit, “Love On,” I Said I Love You First will mark Gomez’s first full-length album in five years.

“I definitely didn’t feel any sort of pressure,” Gomez told Interview of working on the album. “I was maybe just nervous with jitters in the beginning, and then slowly but surely it was happening and it sort of fell into place with a lot of hard work and love.”

Despite being catapulted to teen superstardom on the Disney Channel series Wizards of Waverly Place, Gomez has a storied history of making music too. Her most recent album, Rare, was released in 2020 and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s 200 Chart. The Only Murders in the Building actress has two more solo albums in her discography: 2013’s Stars Dance and 2015’s Revival. Gomez is no stranger to fronting a band too.

From 2008-2012, Gomez was the lead singer of pop-rock band Selena Gomez & the Scene. The former Disney Channel star also released three albums with the band — 2009’s Kiss & Tell, 2010’s A Year Without Rain and 2011’s When the Sun Goes Down — before ultimately deciding to pursue a solo music career.

Her first joint album

I Said I Love You First marks another notable first for Gomez — her first joint album. When Gomez and Blanco first discussed the idea of working on an album together, they agreed to immediately cancel it if things ever got “weird.”

“We also just made it in this house,” Blanco told Interview. “We weren’t going to a studio every day. I’d be like, ‘Hey, I have this cool chord thing.’ Then she’d come in. We weren’t like, ‘Today’s the studio. We’re going to write this song and that.’ So many times it was so hodgepodge. It was like two hours here, two hours there. I’d never worked that way with someone. Usually I work that way if I’m by myself, but it was so cool to be able to do that with her.”

Pivoting away from 'Emilia Pérez'

In 2024, Gomez starred alongside Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Salda?a in Netflix’s musical-thriller Emilia Pérez. The Spanish-language film, which tells the story of a Mexican cartel boss who fakes his death and transitions into living as a woman, was an immediate favorite following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, where it won the Jury Prize and Best Actress award for its ensemble cast of women.

The Jacques Audiard-directed film, which dominated at the Golden Globes and is also the most-nominated film at this year’s Oscars, came under fire in late January after a past series of racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic X posts written by Gascón came to light.

At the Santa Barbara Film Festival on Feb. 9, where she was among the recipients of the Virtuosos Award, Gomez admitted that “some of the magic has disappeared” following Emilia Pérez’s controversy.

“But I choose to continue to be proud of what I’ve done and I’m just grateful. I live with no regrets, and I would do this movie over and over again if I could,” she said. “The director [Audiard] just really trusted me, and I was so grateful because I’ve gotten to show people that I am capable of doing more. I hope this is just the beginning for me.”

Working with Blanco on I Said I Love You First, however, appears to have been a revitalizing experience for Gomez, who previously said she felt “too old for the pop star life.” While the definitive genre of the album remains unknown, some fans have noted that the album’s first single, “Scared of Loving You,” has more of a folk sound than Gomez’s other music.

“Music isn’t going away,” Gomez told the Hollywood Reporter in November 2024. “I just set it down for a second.”