Selena Gomez posted 3 photos on Instagram yesterday. It’s the same message in different colours: Bad Liar. So of course people immediately started speculating what this could mean – the title of a new single? The Billboard Music Awards are happening next week. Some think Bad Liar could drop next week and that she’ll perform it at the show. And also, somehow, Genius already has the partial lyrics (thanks D!):
I put my bags and I'm leaving you
You've been nothing but, a bad liar
Bad liar, you've been nothing but, a bad liar
You've been nothing but, a bad liar
You've been nothing but, a bad liar
It's such a shame, you're a bad liar
Oh honey you're, a bad liar
I don’t know if these are legit but a quick note about Genius and hold onto yourself here because I’m about to talk about Duana and Hamilton. She forced this into my brain and now I’m doing the same to you. #sharing
Genius almost always makes it into one of Duana’s lectures about Hamilton because Lin-Manuel Miranda apparently approved the Hamilton soundtrack lyric annotations on the site. I’m not sure that’s the way Duana would describe it and, frankly, I don’t want to call her to ask her because then I’ll be stuck on the phone for 20 minutes while she lectures me again. The point is that Genius and LMM are connected and Genius is a great Hamilton resource and LMM has provided through Genius some context about his songs and what went into writing them. Which is why, for some (Duana), Genius is superior to other lyric options online. Which brings us back to Selena. Again, I don’t know if these partial Bad Liar lyrics are accurate. But Genius does seem to have a pretty good reputation.
And so, if these lyrics are to be believed, well then you know where this is going next: is this song about Justin Bieber?
If it’s about Justin Bieber does this contradict her claim in Vogue that she’s done putting her relationships on display and wants people to stop talking about her? I mean, she and The Weeknd haven’t exactly been not putting their relationship on display, you know?
But that’s not what I care about right now. Songs are stories. And while many artists tell their own stories through their songs, artists also can tell a story through their songs – it doesn’t have to belong to them, it didn’t have to be about their personal experience. We’ve come to a point though where the assumption is that ALL songs are about the artist. That artists ONLY write songs, sing songs, about themselves. Can you imagine if that happened to books? If authors only wrote books based on what happened to them? Or if screenwriters only wrote shows about what happened to them? If all art was about the artist? Would it be more boring… or would it be more interesting?
