The Singles Jukebox

Can I just shock you? I don’t want a boyfriend. Despite what I just said earlier.

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Alfred Soto: Lest we accuse Selena Gomez of frivolity, she offers this reassurance: “I want to be clear that a boyfriend is nowhere near the top of my list of priorities. Just like the rest of the world, I’m praying for safety, unity and recovery during this pandemic.” The sparseness of this electro arrangement suggests an album track from Hayley Williams’ solo debut — too spare. The lyrics read like placeholders. 
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Wayne Weizhen Zhang: “There’s a difference between a want and a need,” Selena purrs, “some nights I just want more than me.” At various points in her career, Selena’s music about men has been about toxicity: treating them as existentially important to her life, as partners to be pleased, as pools of validation to be lost in. What better way to assert herself then, after putting in so much work in the public eye to be defined outside of her relationships, than releasing another song about wanting a man? But in “Boyfriend,” men aren’t needs. They’re wants, frivolous nice-to-haves: “I want a boyfriend/Tell me are there any good ones left?” She sings about boys like a seat in a trendy bar, a parking spot close to her apartment, or a laundry room on a House Hunters couple’s list of preferred amenities. It’s hilarious, it’s empowering, and boy, oh boy, is it sexy. And none of this would work, of course, if the music didn’t: interpolating Kanye West’s “Fade,” “Boyfriend” slaps harder than any other slap this year. 
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Katherine St Asaph: Between Mabel’s “Boyfriend” and this, I’m real tired of this didactic backpedaling shit. It honestly makes me sad to hear multiple songs clarify that the singer doesn’t need a boyfriend, she just wants one, she wouldn’t want to sound needy, to come off as desperate, lonely, hurt, unsexy or unchill, to have too many feelings at people, because confidence or feminism or whatever. Imagine if “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” went “it might be fun to dance with somebody, but don’t worry, it’s not that I need to feel the heat, I’ll really be fine without somebody who loves me.” Humans are wired for connection! It’s okay! The difference between “Boyfriend”s A and B, though, is that while Mabel’s song sounds like a focus-grouped PSA, Selena’s does not. Her voice is too hesitant and pained for that, even if the bass didn’t sound so tense and the lyric didn’t careen from determined to resigned to flirting at no one in particular, like triple-texting while drunk. (It’s also a Julia Michaels lyric, so there are the usual “wait, what?”s, this time “I could use a hotline or something.” Was this ghostwritten by an ’80s porn company?) Inevitably, as in “Anxiety,” Selena turns it all into a joke at the end, though I guess you could interpret that as false hope. The rest is compellingly messy, a one-song Sweet Charity remake for our times.
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Ian Mathers:  I’m not up on whatever the current Selena Gomez discourse is, but this nails the slinky roll of the verses and the slight soar of the chorus, so I’m happy.
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Thomas Inskeep: This kind of stripped down, minimalist pop seems to fit Gomez best — her best single since “Bad Liar,” it similarly sneaks up on you, insinuating itself without your realizing. 
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Katie Gill: It’s a pity that the problem of Selena Gomez not really having a musical identity is still sticking around. This sounds like a song designed by an entirely unknown eighteen-year-old producer that goes viral on TikTok because of a dance or meme based around the “I want a boyfriend” chorus (if that hasn’t happened yet, TikTok users, feel free to steal it). It doesn’t sound like the sort of song that an industry veteran would put out. Truth be told though, it doesn’t sound like much of a song to begin with. This song is a bit of a one-trick pony and that trick is called the chorus.
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Al Varela: Oftentimes, I wish Selena Gomez would take more risks in her music. I’m sympathetic to her illness of course, but I don’t find her a particularly interesting balladeer, so I wish she’d venture into something different and more ambitious. And yet, when she actually takes those risks, I still don’t like it. The production doesn’t work for me. The bass stumbles far too often to click as well as it should, and that weird inflection of “boyfriend” on the hook makes the song a lot more uncanny than it should be. I otherwise like the needy, flirty lyrics of the song, I think it just needed better production to stick the landing. 
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Nortey Dowuona: A loping bass circles Selena’s patchy, paper mâché voice, and a small drum progression slinks between the bass’s paws before they start chasing each other and hooded synths present themselves in front of Selena. She clears them off and starts walking, with the bass and drums tussling and barking at each other. A small clap flutters around her head, dropping a bass drop that she heaves away, before facing the faceless, hooded synths again. She pushes them away, too, and keeps walking, looking for her Uber, but her vision is clouded by the small clap’s fluttering. Chuckling, Selena lifts the bass and drums into the Uber and gets in with them.
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Harlan Talib Ockey: Breaking news: leading scientists have announced the discovery of “Bad Liar”‘s goth cousin careening down the 605. Like its relative, “Boyfriend” lives and dies on the strength of its bassline; in this case, a heaving, relentless synthwave behemoth that feels like it’s singlehandedly powering your light cycle. This stakes out a solid backdrop for Selena to surge through as she keenly oscillates between desperation and annoyance. However, despite her adamant efforts to keep the grid hanging together, the song’s structure falls to pieces around halfway through. The decision to extend the chorus before kicking off the second verse with a new cascading, vocoder-laced melody tricks the listener into thinking we’ve somehow hit the bridge already, stopping much of the song’s forward momentum in its tracks. The next half scrambles to get the generators back online, but the omission of an actual bridge is particularly noticeable, and leaves us with very little in the way of constructive development. Ah, well. At least we’ll always have the bassline.
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Austin Nguyen: For a song that starts off with a simple and common desire, so much is going on here (the phasing echoes, spritzed-perfume reverb, copycatting vocoder, punctuating uh-huh’s, pseudo-“Malamente” handclaps), and rightfully so: Dating is nothing if not complicated and neurotic, a trial-and-error loop of flakes and dates (fitting for the chk-uh-chk-uh-chk-uh percussion), a balancing act between “a want and a need,” constantly assessing and reassessing your priorities, if the person sitting across the table from you is worth the effort of another date, and wow, have we really only been sitting here for 10 minutes? Dreamlike synths dissipate and collapse pre-chorus for the syncopated beat to come back in, the sonic equivalent of a “well, that date was an utter failure” flop onto your pillow once you come home after finding out his only personality trait is liking The Office. Gomez loses her sultry breathiness and reverts back to her speech-singing mix of boredom, annoyance, and disillusionment (“Tell me, are there any good ones left” could be in a Finsta-rant eyeroll or a plea-for-hope Facetime call); men have proven themselves to be, once again, disappointing. And yet, you start the cycle one more time: You swipe and tap, send screenshots of the dorky parts of their bio to your friends, DM that meme that’s just the right amount of oversharing, and tell yourself this could be the one, even when chances are, this date will probably be as much as a “dead end” as the next, no matter all the ear-whispering sensuality you pull off with that last “I want it.” In its stupidity, the human heart is admirably resilient — and yes, that includes mine.
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John Seroff: Selena Gomez’s Rare has been embarrassingly absent in the BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR clickfest roundup frenzy; I suppose memories are short? Dropped in the second full week of 2020, Rare seemed the product of an artist announcing a quantum leap forward, a consistent refinement that put the multi-platinum Gomez at the indie intellectual punching weight of Carly Rae Jepson or Nilüfer Yanya. “Boyfriend” was a late deluxe edition addition but entirely in character with the self-aware and strident tenor of Rare. It’s a song driven by the twin poles of stomping bass and Gomez’s delicate vocals, searching and a little bit silly but capable of whipsaw acidity and desire.
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Alex Clifton: Had 2020 happened in a different universe, this would’ve been known as the Year of Selena’s Best Music, and it’s a cosmic injustice that the world didn’t get the chance to properly celebrate her return. “Boyfriend” is great. “Boyfriend” feels like I’ve been on several terrible first dates through online dating apps over the past six months, and I’m someone in a long-term monogamous relationship who has never used an online dating app because I don’t understand them. It’s sexy and fun and simple but overwhelmingly effective. Wish I could’ve gone out to hear this in public, somewhere, anywhere, maybe even at the mall, but I guess that’ll have to wait for 2021.
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