“I Said I Love You First,” Said Selena Gomez Monotonously -

By Tim McGuire

After another break from making music, fans clamored for Selena Gomez’s return with her fiance, Benny Blanco, when they announced a collaborative album. The two lovebirds have actually worked together before, with Benny having a few production credits on some of Selena’s hits (“Kill Em With Kindness,” “Same Old Love”) with this being their first full project together. The pair revealed that I Said I Love You First would be an album about the past, present, and future of their relationship, entailing the whole story of their love life.

With such a touching topic selected for the album, it is hard to find a good starting point for this review. To make it even more difficult though, I believe the album itself failed to achieve their goal of telling their story meaningfully. There are many instances throughout the runtime where there is a lack of energy and it leaves a lot to be desired. I will point to “Cowboy” as the best example of this. The slow-paced generic instrumental paired with Selena’s lackluster performance makes it one of the easiest to forget, something that hurts an album that is already short to begin with.

While I still do think that Selena gives a very unengaging performance across the album as a whole, I can admit that she has some good moments. “Younger And Hotter Than Me” and “Don’t Take It Personally” are at opposite ends of the tracklist and stand out as big highlights for her. Both songs feature a stripped-back instrumental that gradually grows over the course of the track and echoey, almost haunting vocals. While the production does boost her performance, Selena can still be credited for these tracks’ ethereal sounds.

Despite this, the album really falls apart once you take a finer look at each song in relation to each other. Some songs are a bit too far out place to truly fit in with the album, regardless if they are a high or low point for the runtime. The two biggest diversions are “Ojos Tristes” and “Bluest Flame,” with both being uniquely different from each other and the rest of the songs.

“Ojos Tristes” (featuring The Marías) heavily interpolates the classic 80s Spanish tune “El Muchacho De Los Ojos Tristes” to the point where it is essentially just a cover. While it does sound nice and different enough from the original, it does leave a bit more to be desired. On the other hand, “Bluest Flame” is a sharp turn to kick off the second half of the album. Selena and Benny made the song with Charli XCX and her influence is extremely clear upon the start. The song is fun (outside of an annoyingly repetitive chorus), but it felt like I accidentally queued a Charli XCX song to play in the middle of the album since it strays so far from everything else before and even after it.

Staying on topic, there is one more song that does not seem to fit the lovey-dovey semantics, but admittedly on a much smaller scale. “How Does It Feel To Be Forgotten” shows an issue in the lyrics as opposed to the sound, featuring Selena talking to an ex of her lover. This song struck me as odd because the lyrics are so unnecessarily rude: “You’re so embarassin’, go cry when no one’s watchin.” Without any prior context given about what this ex did, it makes Selena look like she’s angry at her fiance’s ex purely for the sake of being angry.

At the end of the day, I am not one to judge how people express their love for each other. I Said I Love You is an expression of love made by Selena and Benny for each other. They both seem very happy and proud of the work they have done here, so I am glad they got something out of this. This album will very likely mean a great deal to them as they enter married life, but this album, for me at least, will only find a replay if I need something playing in the background.