Selena Gomez just returned with her third album, Rare. In a career-spanning chat with Beats 1’s Zane Lowe, she revealed the backstory to “Lose You to Love Me,”
At one point, Gomez revealed that she wrote “Lose You to Love Me,” after returning home from a mental health treatment center. “When I walked in, it was literally just the piano and the chorus and a bit of the first verse, and I just sat there,” she said. “And I tell people this, too, because it was also such a very raw moment. A, I had just gotten back, but B, we were in the bright daylight, and that’s not normally how you’re maybe talking about something like that.”
Julia Michaels, who worked on the chart-topping hit, noted that their songwriting team wrote the chart-topping single on Valentine’s Day. “That’s probably one of my favorite[s],” she said. “And it was also our first time seeing [Gomez] in so long. I think it was just one of my favorites just because we were all reunited again and doing it again.”
The “Bad Liar” singer also specified how seeking treatment for her mental health impacted the LP. “I am glad that [mental health] is being discussed more,” she said. “I’m glad that we are having the conversation but it saved my life. Yeah. 1,000 percent. I needed to know… It is a huge part of how I was able to release it and let it go. And sometimes, we would just even write songs that were like just to purge things out and like, ‘That’s never going to see the light of day.’”
Gomez also offered that she’s “a huge advocate for mental health”:
I have this dream of mine that’s beyond all of this where I think that personally, it should be required in schools to be taught dialectical behavior therapy. There is something I read where in I think it was the ‘50s the 14-year-old kids of today have the same anxiety and depression as a 40-year-old in the '50s. That says so much. And I don’t know why that perhaps doesn’t shake people up a bit to where maybe there should be more of that accessible.
Justin Tranter mentioned that “more melodies were coming directly from her, more production ideas were coming directly from her” on Rare.
Elsewhere in the interview, she talked about 6LACK’s guest appearance on “Crowded Room.” “To get 6LACK on it was awesome,” she said. “So, we had discussed features. And at first, I didn’t want any. We were kind of going through who would A, want to do it but would sound great and complement. For me, it’s his tone and it’s his voice as well. So it’s kind of the rapping part, but it’s the singing. So, I was blown away when I got his cut because obviously, they go and do their thing, and so it was awesome.”
Rare is her first full-length since 2015’s Revival. Kid Cudi also has a guest spot, while FINNEAS, Ian Kirkpatrick, and MNEK can be found on the production side.
Read all the lyrics to “Lose You to Love Me” on Genius now.
