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Julia Michaels served as the co-writer on many of Selena Gomez’s hits, and the duo recently reunited on “Anxiety,” the opening track from Michaels' new EP, Inner Monologue, Pt. 1. The duet is produced by Ian Kirkpatrick, who recently collaborated with Gomez on “Bad Liar” and “Back to You.” The song finds both pop singers expressing their frustration with friends not understanding their mental health issues.
Michaels addresses struggling with depression and anxiety on the first verse:
My friends, they wanna take me to the movies
I tell ‘em to fuck off, I’m holding hands with my depression
And right when I think I’ve overcome it
Anxiety starts kicking in to teach that shit a lesson
On the chorus, she vents about her friends not being able to empathize:
But all my friends, they don’t know what it’s like, what it’s like
They don’t understand why I can’t sleep through the night
I’ve been told that I could take something to fix it
Damn, I wish it, I wish it was that simple, ah
In a Beats 1 interview, Michaels opened up about the songwriting process.
“I was writing with Scott Harris and Ian Kirkpatrick, and I basically was just like, ‘I kind of wanna talk about these sort of things that I deal with on a daily basis,’” she said. “Not just anxiety, but the fear of missing out and sort of wanting to do things, but never actually having the ability to go through with anything that you want to do. It’s just a way into the mind of someone that has anxiety and has these struggles for someone that doesn’t understand it.”
Michaels recently wrote a piece about her mental health issues for Glamour, sharing experiences which informed the song. “To people who don’t have it, anxiety can seem so foreign and burdening. I once had a boyfriend who would get mad at me every time I had a panic attack,” she remembered. “He made me feel even worse than my mind was already making me feel. My dad went through a similar phase with me as well.”
Gomez, on the other hand, relates to Michaels' struggles, as the latter singer explained in an interview with Billboard.
“I think this was the song that works the best for us, because it’s something we both struggle with,” Michaels said. “We also liked the idea of doing a song together where we’re talking about our relationship with anxiety. We’re not talking about our relationship with men or us fighting over somebody or something like that—those things that are typical duets for women.”
On Gomez’s verse, she sings about feeling like a burden to her exes because of her issues:
Feel like I’m always apologizing for feeling
Like I’m out of my mind when I’m doing just fine
And my exes all say that I’m hard to deal with
And I admit it, it’s true
In an Instagram post, Gomez praised Michaels for helping her deal with anxiety. “My sweet soul sister. Julia you have been a huge part of my life,” she wrote. “You have taught me how to have courage when I have self doubt. This song is extremely close to my heart as I’ve experienced anxiety and know a lot of my friends do too. You’re never alone if you feel this way.”
Back in 2017, Michaels broke down her hit debut single, “Issues,” on Genius' series Verified:
Read all the lyrics Julia Michaels' “Anxiety” featuring Selena Gomez on Genius now.
