Are we living in a brief Selenassaince? The promotional blitz around Selena Gomez’s new Apple TV+ documentary is not only giving fans an autobiographical look at her life, but it also comes with a new single, lyric video, a limited-run SiriusXM Radio show and plenty of Gomez factoids to keep her fans satiated.
“This is probably the most you’ll hear about me for a while,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview published Thursday. “I want this to come out, but I also want this behind me. Every now and then, it’s important to just disappear.”
Just ahead of the Friday release of her documentary “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me,” Gomez walked the AFI Fest red carpet to promote the film Wednesday and on Thursday released the eponymous title track featured briefly in the project’s latest trailer. The lullaby-like ballad was inspired by her journals over the past few years and offers an inside look at her mental and physical health struggles, including her history of bipolar disorder, psychosis, suicidal thoughts and numerous health issues that have been chronicled in the media.
“‘My Mind & Me’ is a little sad, but it’s also a really nice way of putting a button on the documentary part of life, and then it’ll just be fun stories of me living my life and going on dates and having conversations with myself,” Gomez told Rolling Stone. “I feel like it’s going be an album that’s like, ‘Oh, she’s not in that place anymore; she’s actually just living life.’”
The song plays throughout the documentary and is part of a new record she told Vulture she’s been working on “for years,” and Rolling Stone reported that she’s written 24 songs for it. She said she might start recording the album by the end of the year.
“I want to be able to grow through my music,” she told Vulture. “I am the person who’s terrified of what will happen once it’s out, so I want it to be really well done and representative of where I am. There is a bunch of fun stuff that I’m so eager to leak, if I’m being honest. I shall not. But I’m so excited. It’ll be fun and refreshing, I think.”
As for the doc, the Emmy-nominated “Only Murders in the Building” star told Rolling Stone that she gave “Madonna: Truth or Dare” director Alek Keshishian full access over the six-year shoot and the final product was so raw that she almost didn’t release it.
“I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it,” she told the magazine.
The film also shows the recording artist checking herself into a treatment facility — one of four that she’s been to in her 30-year life.
Also on Thursday, the former child star and SiriusXM announced the launch of Selena Gomez Radio, a limited-run channel presented and curated by the artist. It launched Friday on SiriusXM’s Channel 14 and will run through Nov. 10 and on the SiriusXM app through Dec. 2.
In a press release about it, the “Selena + Chef” star shared more about how her documentary came to be. “My Mind & Me” started as an artful concert doc of her ill-fated 2016 Revival Tour — that detoured to a treatment facility — then turned into something else altogether.
“We initially thought that we were gonna do a concert tour video, and during the tour I had to cancel it because I was going through a lot of stuff personally. So we decided to stop. Then I kind of went through a phase where I just needed to be on my own, and then the [2019 philanthropic] Kenya trip kind of came up and we decided we wanted to record that trip,” she said. “So it really wasn’t gonna be a documentary until the end, when we filmed all the stuff and where I am now and going home and visiting my house and where I came from, I can tell that it was gonna be something bigger than just a puff piece.”
The “Wizards of Waverly Place” alum is often described as “authentic” and “self-deprecating” — traits that at one point made her the most followed person on Instagram — and she brings that energy to the new documentary, which notably shows her at her lowest lows, including lashing out at friends and struggling to get out of bed.
“You know, I didn’t want people to think, I was like, I’m great and everything’s great when I know I’ve had real moments and real scary things happen. And I just really wanted to be honest with people,” she said in the release. “But I don’t want it to be about me. I want it to be about the conversation around mental health and ways that we can change the conversation. I feel like a human sacrifice. I’m like throwing my personal life in to hopefully have this conversation be bigger and transcend.”
Gomez, whose Rare Beauty cosmetics brand donates proceeds to mental health initiatives, also said that she considers her pal Taylor Swift her most influential artist and that she really misses her fans.
“One thing I’d like to say to my fans that I really miss you guys. Before the pandemic, I felt so connected to everyone and you know, since it’s been a bit of a journey kind of adjusting to what life is now, I get so excited because it’s very sparse,” she said. “I don’t get to go out a lot. There are new rules and then when I get to meet a fan, it just, it really makes my day and I miss that. Connecting is the whole reason why I do what I do. So I miss like touring and doing meet and greets and even just having a little convo with someone just makes my day.”
The multi-hyphenate also shared with Rolling Stone that her mental and physical health struggles are still part of her day-to-day. The kidney transplant she had in 2017 won’t fix things forever, and her bipolar medication makes it so that she’s unlikely to be able to carry her own children: “That’s a very big, big, present thing in my life,” she said. (But, she added, she’s sure that “however I’m meant to have them, I will.”)
Gomez also addressed the continued hubbub around the podcast interview influencer Hailey Bieber gave that shot down speculation that she got together with now-husband Justin Bieber while the singer and Gomez were still dating.
Without naming either Bieber, she told Rolling Stone that “somebody made a comment and it involved me, and then for two days I felt bad about myself,” sharing how something like that would have previously affected her more. A day later, Gomez appeared to address Bieber’s “Call Her Daddy” interview on TikTok Live: “I was like, I’m just going to say, ‘Everybody be kind to each other. Everybody just focus on what’s going on in the real world.’”
Then, a few weeks later, she and Hailey Bieber made headlines again for posing in a “plot twist” photo together at the Academy Museum Gala in mid-October. (When the Vulture reporter asked Gomez about the photos, she said, “Yeah, it’s not a big deal. It’s not even a thing.”)
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