Selena Gomez And Benny Blanco’s Joint Album ‘I Said I Love You First’ Is Here

Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco have been musical collaborators longer than they’ve been romantic partners, and the newly engaged couple is going back to their roots, so to speak, with their new joint album I Said I Love You First. The duo first teased the project with “Scared of Loving You” and the Gracie Abrams collab “Call Me When You Break Up” last month and set the stage for the album’s release last week with the single “Sunset Blvd.”

On I Said I Love You First, Gomez sings about romances past and present as she reflects on her journey to where she is now in her happy and loving relationship with Blanco. The album comes just a few months after the Emilia Pérez star reiterated in a Variety interview that she had no imminent plans to return to music, previously saying last year that she regards music as her “hobby” and only plans to release one more album. I Said I Love You First offered Gomez the chance to speak about her life today in a format through which most fans know her and put her own spin on a variety of sounds, even reimagining Spanish singer Jeanette’s beloved 1981 song “El Muchacho de los Ojos Tristes” on the emotionally tender “Ojos Tristes.”

Nothing about Gomez and Blanco’s love for each other is put on for the public, as Blanco pointed out to Interview last month.

“I worship the ground she walks on and I feel like she’s the same way to me. There’s no ego between us. She’s praying for me to win and I’m praying for her to win. And I wake up in the morning—I know she does the same thing—and I’m like, ‘How can I make her life better?’” he said. “Holding her isn’t close enough. I want to be inside of her whole body. I just feel a thing for her that I can’t even explain. I’m so sappy.”

Gomez, who has recruited Blanco to produce her own hits like “Same Old Love,” “Kill Em With Kindness,” and the more recent “Single Soon,” is thankful for Blanco listening to her in the studio and facilitating a smooth singer-producer relationship.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for me to speak up. Most of my anxiety right now is wanting him to speak because I feel like he’s more talented than I am in this field. It’s like working with a great filmmaker,” she confessed. “Whether we were together or not, I think he still would’ve listened to everything that I had to say, and he was able to almost transcribe it into music, into what the feeling of what I was talking about should be. And I really found that to be helpful because this album definitely feels just as much mine as I’m sure it does his.”