CULTURE

Selena Gomez’s New Song “Back to You” Sounds Like It Might Be About Justin Bieber

“If I could do it all again / I know I’d go back to you.”


selena gomez
Sean Zanni/Getty Images

Selena Gomez‘s unfortunate Met Gala spray tan is officially old news. On Thursday afternoon, the pop star and actress released a new single, and now, instead of demanding to know who was responsible for her disconcertingly deep Met Ball “glow,” the Internet is up in arms wondering who the song is about. “Back to You,” the first single off the 13 Reasons Why Season 2 soundtrack (Gomez is an executive producer on the show) gives off similar vibes to those of her recent work with Kygo (“It Ain’t Me”) and Marshmello (“Wolves”). It also happens to have some pretty #deep lyrics about a tumultuous romance—which many believe means it’s about Gomez’s most famously tumultuous romance of all.

“You could break my heart in two / But when it heals, it beats for you / I know it’s forward but it’s true / I wanna hold you when I’m not supposed to,” she croons in the song’s chorus, per Genius. “When I’m lying close to someone else / You’re stuck in my head and I can’t get you out of it / If I could do it all again / I know I’d go back to you.”

Knowing Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber‘s complicated—and extremely public—history, it’s hard to hear the song and not immediately think of “Jelena.” The pair began their on-and-off relationship in 2010, and rekindled most recently in the fall of 2017, after Gomez went through another very public relationship and subsequent breakup with The Weeknd. But Bieber and Gomez were only “on” for a few months, and called it quits yet again in March, this time, reportedly, for good.

Of course, the song could just be a song, or it could be about someone else—The Weeknd, maybe? A character from 13 Reasons Why?—or nobody at all. That said, there are a few other lines that do feel pretty closely related to a certain Canadian boy wonder. At one point, for example, Gomez sings that she “let a couple years water down how I’m feeling about you”; later, she wonders “what’s the point in hiding” since “everybody knows we got unfinished business.” Bieber, is that you? And if you need even more concrete proof of Gomez’s seeming inspiration for the track, look no further than this sneak peek of the song’s music video, which drops on Friday and appears to feature a blond, floppy-haired boy who looks a lot like the Biebs. Interesting.

Related: All the Famous Women Justin Bieber Has Been Spotted With Over the Years