Selena Gomez Gets Candid About Justin Bieber Breakup
“Ultimately it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Selena Gomez recently spoke about her breakup from Justin Bieber, who she dated on-and-off for about six years. The pair officially split in 2018, and eventually, Bieber ended up marrying model Hailey Baldwin (now Hailey Bieber.)
Gomez spoke about the split in her recent Apple TV+ documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, describing it as “the best thing that ever happened to her.” The singer explained that “Everything was so public. I felt haunted by a past relationship that no one wanted to let go of. Then I just moved past it, and I wasn’t afraid anymore.”
She added, “I feel like I had to go through the worst possible heartbreak ever and then just forgetting everything at the drop of the [hat], it was really confusing. But I just think that needed to happen and ultimately it was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
As most singer-songwriters do with breakups, Gomez was eventually able to pour her heart out through song, and described the process of creating “Lose You to Love Me.” ”I text Julia Michaels and Justin Tranter and said, ‘I think I’m ready to just say I’m sad,’” Gomez recalls in the documentary. “We wrote the song in 45 minutes. The fastest song I’ve ever written.”
She went on to unpack the meaning of the song, and expressed her hopes for what other people took away from it too. ”It’s about more than a lost love. It’s me learning to choose myself, to choose life, but also hoping that people can find grace and peace in that too. The song is about knowing that you completely lost every part of who you are just to rediscover yourself again.”
Though Gomez has since moved on from the breakup, the documentary gave fans an insight into what it was like to be constantly associated with Bieber, or other people. While rehearsing for her 2016 ‘Revival’ tour, Gomez spoke about the pressures of not wanting to disappoint the head of her record label, John Jannick, who’d asked her to collaborate with Bieber for a song.
“I don’t want to disappoint John. I don’t want him to think that he signed some f-cking Disney kid,” Gomez explains in the footage. “It just sucks too, because [of] the whole song thing. He called me this morning about the song with Justin, like, when am I just going to be good enough by myself? When am I gonna be good just by myself, not needing anybody to be associated with?”
Since the documentary was filmed, Gomez appears to be in a much better place with herself and with the Biebers, as she was recently photographed alongside Hailey Bieber at the Academy Museum Gala.
