I Said I Love You First is a personal album with no personality from Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco

It’s fair to say Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco, two infrequent hitmakers, have shaped the pop landscape of the 2010s with their unique approach to whisper-singing (the former) and production credits on people like Halsey, Lana Del Rey, SZA and more (the latter). Their first full-length collaboration, I Said I Love You First, is billed as an intimate look into their lives (as suggested by the cover art), but its sleepy melodies and uncharismatic singing makes it confusing who the record’s even for.

This is basically a Selena Gomez album, and her inability to carry a tune yields some mismatched power dynamics. She’s upstaged by Gracie Abrams (!), who at least puts some theater into her performance, and holds no chance against The Marías, whose breathy vocalist finds a rhythm and sets the dreamy “Ojos Tristes” back on track. “Let’s pretend we’re underwater,” Gomez sings on the stilted sex anthem “Cowboy”, and it already sounds like she is. There’s the tepid six-year-old Reggaetón “I Can’t Get Enough”, where she and Blanco first started working together. She vows, “I like that, you like that, so let’s be crazy,” so utterly unconvincing that it sounds like her idea of crazy is ordering one mimosa at an early brunch.

The worst offender is “Bluest Flame”, whose amalgam of trendy producers (Charli xcx, Dylan Brady, Cashmere Cat) construct an exciting beat, but it’s far too transparent. Gomez doesn’t even know what to do with it. “I just wanna go all night, hotter than the bluest flame,” she alleges, but unlike Charli, who she’s clearly imitating, it sounds like she’s terrified of what she’s saying. Written by Charli and basically performed as if it’s her song, it’s a Brat B-side that Gomez has co-opted for some diversity on the tracklist; its whooping calls and electronic production are bombastically out of character.

Hiding behind collaborators doesn’t work, and neither do the solos. Her talk-singing gets lazy on “Don’t Take It Personally” and “Scared Of Loving You”, the tweeness of the latter reaching unbearable levels. “How Does It Feel To Be Forgotten” flips a newfound love back on its deserted ex, but its meanness and exaggeration seems like a faux persona. “You’re so embarrassing / Go cry where no one’s watching,” she moans, making it seem like an elaborate, constructed fantasy. Even when “Sunset Blvd” opens up for the best chorus of the record, she crouches back down to the mic at the end to lightly command, ostensibly to Blanco, “Try your hardest not to bust it.” It veers right past the intimate and into the uncomfortable.

Like a dutiful employee, Blanco gets the job done with no mishaps, but his aversion to risk-taking gets boring. Even when he’s attempting to emulate Lana Del Rey (“How Does It Feel To Be Forgotten”, “You Said You Were Sorry”) or Dua Lipa (“Don’t Wanna Cry”), his signature style is weak folk ballads (“Sunset Blvd” is a nice exception, and “Younger And Hotter Than Me” ends on some interesting, noisy notes). The record perks up when he brings new people or influences into the equation, but what does it say that when it’s you and her alone, the songs just aren’t that pleasant?

The record has two interludes, which only serve to confuse its messaging. The intro, a speech to her Wizards Of Waverly Place reboot castmates on the last day of shooting, would read as heartfelt if it weren’t for the camera clicking. Even its existence as a recording seems strange. And “Do You Wanna Be Perfect”, a comedy skit of a TV commercial promising impossible enlightenment, falls flat as satire. “Do you wanna live up to completely unrealistic standards set by the current landscape of social media?” she asks, which is more than a little pithy coming from the person with the 4th most Instagram followers in the world.

I Said I Love You First enters with little to say and leaves with no details about who Gomez and Blanco are as a duo. I’m happy they’re happy, as they seem to be, but the album is a waste of an opportunity to define each performer, both of whom are relatively amorphous in the pop music scene. But I Said I Love You First barely even tries to entertain during its runtime. It’s fundamentally uninteresting music.