There’s no better way to return to music after a hiatus than hand in hand with one of her close friends, songwriter Julia Michaels. Michaels has written songs for Gomez such as “Hands To Myself,” “Good For You,” and “Bad Liar.” Michaels now has a solo career of her own but she just released her new EP, Inner Monologue, Pt. 1 – EP, and one of the songs called “Anxiety,” featuring Selena Gomez is her latest single.
The song is about mental health, something that is close to both women’s hearts. Gomez, has been staying out of the pubic eye these past few months after entering treatment for an “emotional breakdown,” and has not released any new music since her 2018 single “Back To You,” aside from an appearance with Cardi B on “Taki Taki.”
However, it’s clear from the lyrics why Gomez chose this song after a difficult few months.
Michaels begins by singing, “My friends, they wanna take me to the movies / I tell ’em to fuck off, I’m holding hands with my depression / And right when I think I’ve overcome it / Anxiety starts kicking in to teach that shit a lesson.”
“Feel like I’m always apologizing for feeling like I’m out of my mind when I’m doing just fine,” Gomez later sings “And my exes will say that I’m hard to deal with, and I admit it, it’s true.” The “exes” are likely Justin Bieber and The Weeknd.
And then there’s the chorus:
“But all my friends, they don’t know what it’s like, what it’s Luke / They don’t understand why I can’t sleep through the night / And I thought that I could something to fix it / Damn, I wish it, I wish it was that simple, ah / All my friends they don’t know what it’s like, what it’s like.”
Michaels discussed with Zane Lowe about the song. “I was like, ‘I think it’d be really awesome to have a song with two women on it that struggle with the same thing, that are talking about something other than two women fighting for a guy’s attention,’” Michaels said. “Or something like that. It’s almost like a female empowerment song without it being a female empowerment song.”
Fans might not relate to this, but they will for sure appreciate hearing the song from the two stars.
Take a listen to the song below!