Selena Gomez: I’m no longer in a sad girl world
Selena Gomez debuted at the age of 12 and made it to the hearts of every teenager as Alex Russo in Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place.
She jumped from television to films, started her singing career, donned the producer’s hat and turned into an entrepreneur for her beauty brand. It has been quite a journey for the 30-year-old and an excerpt of it is now available on Apple TV+.
Selena Gomez recently released her documentary– Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, chronicling six years of her career around fame, and physical and mental struggle in the wake of her lupus and bipolar disorder diagnosis.
Talking about the unfiltered documentary, Selena Gomez, in a conversation with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, opened up about her ‘Unimaginable stardom’ as mentioned in the description of the film. She explained, “I guess that’s the complex part of it all. I don’t look at myself any differently, is basically what I’m going to say. Because I don’t go online and I genuinely make a complete effort to do that. And I just look at myself and my family looks at me the way that I’ve always been. But to other people, sometimes it is. I never want to be this unattainable thing. I want people to think, ‘Hey, I would be friends with her,’ because that’s the approach I would take.”
Selena’s song, My Mind & Me captures her raw and complex emotions. A part of it read ‘sometimes I feel like an accident that people are passing and they don’t check on the passenger.’ When asked about it, she revealed how she came up with the hard-hitting words, “It actually was from a journal entry, and I remember, it was definitely in a time of my life where I just… There’s just so much bottled up, and I think that I do a good job, hopefully, of being cautious and being aware of other people’s feelings. And I’m very vague, and I can be very politically correct. And in my music, I get to really say what I feel. And I think that’s why this song means so much to me, and in a different way than any of my other songs only because I’ve attached this to my mental health and I’m addressing what it is.”
Selena spilled the beans on what came first, the documentary title or the song title. She said, “Well, we actually didn’t have a title because this was six years in the making, and we were still brainstorming, so we didn’t even have a title. And then we were in the studio, and I wrote with my writing partners, and we then just had this idea. And I was like, “Wait, this is for the documentary. Why don’t we just call it that?” So it worked out actually.” She believes the purpose of her film is to connect with viewers who might share the same feelings.
So, where is Selena Gomez right now with her music? “Yeah, this has been very weird and tricky because I’m no longer in sad girl world, if that makes sense. And it is kind of all I’ve known. And that sounds kind of bad, and obviously, not all of my music is that. Obviously, I want it to be fun, but I’ve been having a hard time, honestly. I’ve definitely written and have at least 12 songs that I do love, but I don’t know if I just don’t feel confident with them yet for some reason. And I want to continue to keep getting better so that I don’t, obviously, don’t want to go back. I want to be able to be forward thinking and give myself a whole new lane, and just try it. So I’ve been experimenting a lot, but it is getting closer. It’s just a bit frustrating,” she clarified.