Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco - "I Said I Love You First"
Selena can do better
Functionally, I Said I Love You First is Selena Gomez’s seventh studio album and fourth solo album (the first three had her backing band, The Scene). However, this album also features producer Benny Blanco, album-wide, as a co-writer and performer (on keyboards and programming, with vocals on track 10, “Do You Wanna Be Perfect”).1
So the album cover feels apt, with Benny and Selena in bed for the album.
There are pros and cons to the arrangement. Let’s start with the positives:
The album channels a consistent vibe which scales nicely even among its more varied songs; the album shifts through a number of genric influences, which makes this more of a feat.
Said vibe is frequently reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac, which is always a positive.
That’s it.
The album is otherwise just fourteen short tracks (no song longer than 3:30, coming in at just over half an hour of playtime) with mixed quality. And the worst of them make the Fleetwood vibeyness dull, which is just a shame.
“Sunset Blvd” tries to channel Chappell Roan, which feels uninspired, but still manages to be amusing at times.
At large, the album just doesn’t feel or sound like a Selena album. On the one hand, that means that Blanco managed to leave his mark, but that doesn’t make it good. Ultimately, it’s just kind of dull.
Part of the delay in getting this review written was just how unenthused I was to give it a second listen. But I couldn’t skip it because it has been a while since that first listen.
There are a couple of decent songs here, such as “Call Me When You Break Up” and “Don’t Wanna Cry”, but it’s largely a big miss for me.
Rating: Orange
“Do You Wanna Be Perfect” is a whopping 38-second-long fake ad interlude.