Don’t Hold Your Breath For New Music From Selena Gomez

For a full year now, Selena Gomez’s fans have been concerned she may have retired her pop-star career for good. Throughout 2024, Gomez has been solely focused on acting and gave several quotes indicating that she’s less interested in making music anymore. That mood seemed to change in early 2025 when Gomez shared pics of herself in a recording studio, but now, it sounds like she’s fully prioritizing acting over music.

Gomez shared that she’s “ready to focus on” acting during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Feb. 9. “I think film and art-making and being around such incredible, talented people that have done nothing but uplift me along the way. It’s going to be very hard for me to ever go back to music after this,” she said.

The statement comes less than a month after Gomez and her fiancé Benny Blanco seemed to tease new music in a couple social media posts. On Jan. 17, Blanco responded to a TikTok follower pleading for him to “make some new songs” for Gomez with a video of Gomez seemingly recording music in a home studio.

A few days later, Gomez shared an Instagram story of herself looking excited with headphones on, listening to a blurred-out song.

The anticipation has been building for Gomez’s music for about a year, since she released her latest single “Love On” back in February 2024. That same month, Gomez first expressed her interests shifting away from music, saying she was “tired” of juggling both music and acting during an appearance on the SmartLess podcast.

The next month, Gomez told Rolling Stone she’s only interested in taking a musical hiatus, and that it wouldn’t be permanent. “I think it’s natural for people to take breaks, but I think for me, there is a whole other aspect to my life, pride and joy,” Gomez said. “I love film. I love TV. I just feel like I haven’t done a lot of the things that I want to do in that space ... It’s not that it’s ‘no, never’ [to music]. It’s more that I would like to explore that world a bit more and have the time to actually do that.”