Benny Blanco is Selena Gomez’s fiancé and her muse.
Ahead of the release of their first project together, a collaborative album titled I Said I Love You First, the couple did an interview with Rolling Stone, in which Gomez, 32, revealed how Blanco, 37, helped her connect with music again.
As fans may remember, Gomez’s last full-length album was 2020’s Rare (she also released an EP, Revelación, in 2021).
Gomez said one reason for her musical hiatus was being “very frustrated and kind of confused on where I wanted to go next musically.”
“And we had been together for a while, and obviously I would confide in him. I couldn’t figure out my sound,” Gomez told the outlet of her fiancé Blanco, who proposed in December 2024. “It helps that he knows a little bit about music, and it kind of happened organically to where I felt like this process was unlike any other process I’d ever been through.”
Blanco, a producer, shared that they kept the project “really close to the chest,” working only with friends.
To help Gomez write, Blanco recalled taking out a pen every time Gomez woke up so she could “write what was on her mind.”
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“Then we’d go into the other room and create it, and it became a song. It was such a cathartic and therapeutic experience,” said Blanco.
Fans have gotten a taste of Gomez’s new “sound” through the previously released singles “Sunset Blvd,” “Scared of Loving You” and “Call Me When You Break Up” with Gracie Abrams, which are all featured in the new album.
As for how the album title came to be, Gomez told Rolling Stone that it was something “factual,” describing what “actually went down” in her romance with Blanco.
“It’s just factual. It just is actually what went down, and it describes us. This whole project embodies his stories combined with my stories. They have meanings that are really just personal to both of us. So one song could actually mean two different things,” said Gomez.
She also thinks the title is “just really cute,” she said, adding, “Guilty as charged. I said ‘I love you’ first.”
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I Said I Loved You First is out Friday, March 21.
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