Selena Gomez said My Mind & Me, her Apple TV+ documentary, is “a bit on the serious side” on The Kelly Clarkson Show yesterday, and its titular single released this morning (November 3) backs up that descriptor in spades. The piano ballad arrived alongside an animated lyric video, and each line is more brutally honest than the last.
“Wanna hear a part to my story / I tried to hide in the glory / And sweep it under the table / So you would never know,” Gomez melodically sings in the first verse, which goes on to depict Gomez as “an accident people look when they’re passing” but “never check on the passenger” because “they just want a free show.” The acoustic chorus finds Gomez admitting to a constant fight with her mind but reclaiming her power and proclaiming, “I wouldn’t change my life / And all of the crashing and burning and breaking, I know now / If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now.”
The 30-year-old singer and Only Murders In The Building actress wrote the powerful song with frequent collaborator Justin Tranter, Julia Michaels, and Ian Kirkpatrick.
With Clarkson, Gomez shared how difficult it was to chronicle in the documentary her 2019 stay at Boston’s McLean Hospital and her subsequent coming to terms with a bipolar diagnosis, but she tried to incorporate just as many positive or uplifting moments.
“It’s a very honest take on somebody who has to live with all of these things,” she said. “But I mean, the whole point, hopefully, is at the end, you’re like, ‘Well, cool, she’s gonna go live her life and do her thing. ‘Cause I am never gonna make one of these again.”
Vulture published an interview yesterday with Gomez and My Mind & Me director Alek Keshishian, and she similarly opened up about the challenges of filming such an unflinching documentary. When asked why they chose to hold off on making the doc around her 2016 Revival Tour, which bled into a career hiatus citing mental health complications stemming from lupus, Gomez said, “I wasn’t well. That’s actually the only answer. I wasn’t well, and I couldn’t continue. I had to cancel what I needed to cancel in order to live.”
All indications are that, on the other side of My Mind & Me, Gomez has arrived in a place where she knows how to better protect herself from the unrelenting pressures of celebrity. As for the single, Gomez told Variety at the doc’s premiere that she hopes to release more new music in 2023.
Watch the lyric video above.
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me hits Apple TV+ on 11/4.
