Dear Gossips,

Big day for Selena Gomez yesterday. Her new song, “Lose You To Love Me”, topped the Billboard 100, the first #1 of her career. It’s not my favourite song (and it’s OK to have different preferences, Selenators – we are allowed to like what we like) but I do love how she worked for it. After the release of her two new singles, “Lose You To Love Me” and “Look At Her Now”, she went out there and promoted her work, she talked about the work, she spoke candidly about what she put into the work. And it’s brought her here, to this achievement. Which obviously means a lot to her: 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on

She also posted about it extensively in her IG stories – there is two years’ worth of pain and recovery in the music so, of course, when you share your soul in the art and the art is successful, it has to feel good, and it’s understandable to want to celebrate it. But does it seem like someone else wants a piece of that? 

A few hours after it was announced that Selena had hit #1, Justin Bieber tweeted…twice: 

Last week, after Selena dropped “Lose You To Love Me”, JB started teasing new music, promising that if his Instagram post got to 20 million likes, he’d release a new song by Christmas. So far he’s at about 11.5 million, just over halfway to goal and if you know IG, you know the likes slow down after the first day or two. Now he’s back to hinting that fresh tracks are on the way, just as Selena hit #1. Coincidence or conspiracy? 

If we were operating in a vacuum, sure, Selena could be doing her thing over here and JB would be free to do his thing over there. That’s not how it works these days though, especially with these celebrities from this generation who understand how social media functions and its impact on behaviour. You could also argue that since Selena’s singing about heartbreak and breakup, and that everyone knows it’s about him, and people are talking about him anyway, JB might as well make use of that to his own advantage – and that’s fair, totally. 

But, again, I come back to the fact that he’s married, he has a wife, and if he is exploiting his history with Selena, how does that work at home, when he’s supposed to have moved on? And can we say this is a case of history repeating itself with every new cohort? It was kinda like this with Britney and Justin, non? The details aren’t exactly the same but the enmity is there, no doubt. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey