10 of the best and 10 of the worst Selena Gomez songs of all time (2024)

"Lose You to Love Me" is a soaring, tender ballad that proves why Gomez is a force to be reckoned with.

The beauty of "Lose You to Love Me" is its raw simplicity. That she chose a ballad as her comeback anthem, imprudently dropped it in the middle of the week, and it rocketed to No. 1 illustrates Gomez's power as more than a pop star who makes catchy radio hits.

The arrangement is minimal, uncomplicated, and serves to spotlight Gomez's intimate lyrics. Some are cutting, accusatory ("In two months, you replaced us / Like it was easy") while others are mature, contemplative ("I saw the signs and I ignored them"). It's deeply personal and yet, many a heartbreak victim will find themselves in those lines.

As the song builds to its triumphant final chorus, a choir of Gomez harmonies begins to swell and take up space, elegantly mirroring the overall theme. With solitude and patience, her own voice has been able to flourish.

"Bad Liar" cemented Gomez as an "alt-pop provocateur."

After the Disney pop of her early career, followed by the former-Disney-star-all-grown-up vibes of 2015's "Revival," Gomez captured something entirely fresh and deliciously intriguing with "Bad Liar."

That it's sparse, shimmery, and weird is the entire point. "Bad Liar" didn't sound like anything Gomez had ever released, and it didn't sound like anything else, either.

As Rolling Stone noted — ranking "Bad Liar" as the 39th best song of the 2010s decade — the song is also a testament to Gomez's finely tuned entourage, her careful selection of collaborators who understand and elevate her strengths. Recording over an iconic Talking Heads bass line was the brainchild of Julia Michaels, Gomez's most frequent cowriter. The Petra Collins-directed music video was the perfect combination of cheeky and sinister. With "Bad Liar," Gomez's "transformation into an alt-pop provocateur was complete."

She got even more adventurous with "Fetish," giving her pop instincts an evocative edge.

While pre-2017 Gomez often bounced between the two absolutes of cheesy girl power ("Who Says," "Me & My Girls") and submissive romanticism ("The Heart Wants What It Wants," "Come & Get It"), "Fetish" embraces the messy, fragile, freeing complexities of love, lust, and womanhood. It sees Gomez both alluring and eerie, batting her eyelashes while she sneers. "If I were you, I'd do me, too" is the most evocative and thrilling lyric of her entire career.

The song is further strengthened by its spectral, unhinged aesthetics — as if Gomez was born to writhe around on her kitchen floor and stick her tongue in an eyelash curler.

The "Virgin Suicides" vibe suits her so well. We've come to expect former child stars, especially those in the music industry, to assert maturity by embracing sexuality — but Gomez subverts that tradition by giving hers the hint of a horror movie or Shakespearean tragedy.

Her breathy vocals are perfect for "Hands to Myself," the ultimate seduction bop.

"Hands to Myself" is the greatest triumph of Gomez's first capital-A album "Revival," her first since hopping from Disney's Hollywood Records to Interscope — and her first as a bona fide sex symbol.

But Gomez doesn't simply weaponize her sexuality and confidence like many pop stars of yore; armed with Max Martin's twinkling production, "Hands to Myself" is a winking power play that makes seduction look fun and effortless.

Gomez can't belt the high notes like many of her peers, but "Hands to Myself" illustrates how her feathery swoons and breathy whispers can be just as effective. And after she spends two minutes making her lover feel like he's in control, toying with his sense of pride, her contradictory admission ("I mean I could, but why would I want to?") feels like an immediate sugar rush.

This is also Gomez's own favorite song on "Revival" and the noted favorite of Taylor Swift, Gomez's best friend and our generation's preeminent singer-songwriter.

"Dance Again" is the kind of catchy that never gets old or annoying.

Gomez has historically had trouble making non-irritating dance anthems. Much of her early discography was populated by excessive EDM-flavored songs, most of which felt like sequined outfits she was handed to try on. In recent years, she has triumphed when she ignores that urge and bucks radio trends.

Gomez broke that tradition with "Dance Again," a song explicitly designed to make you want to shimmy and groove, and it does exactly that — not just effectively, but irresistibly. If you don't find yourself at least bopping your head to that sparkling 70s bass line in the chorus, you're probably not much fun at parties.

"Vulnerable" is the crown jewel of "Rare," Gomez's most personal album to date.

"Vulnerable" manages to boast the best chorus in Gomez's discography, one hell of a bridge, and some of her most intimate lyrics ever. Its hypnotic production feels indebted to everything from '80s club music to modern R&B.

It's a deliriously pleasant listening experience, to be sure, but perhaps the song's greatest triumph is how it feels like an honest reflection of Gomez's soul — that swirling, starry-eyed ether that has made her one of our most relatable and endearing celebrities. It's difficult to translate that kind of magic into music, and yet she accomplished it in three minutes and 12 seconds.

"Same Old Love" is a clear highlight on "Revival," a pithy blend of jazz, trap, and punk-pop.

Gomez delivers a slightly bratty, slightly pained variety of attitude on this post-breakup bop — clearly taking cues from experimental-pop darling Charli XCX, a cowriter and background vocalist on the song. In fact, "Same Old Love" would feel at home on Charli's album "Sucker," released the year prior.

That "Same Old Love" doesn't blend into "Revival's" track list is a good thing. It proves how she can bend different genres to her will, how malleable her voice can be, and how she's willing to abandon molds and expectations to follow her many-hued artistic instincts. "Same Old Love" is a risk that certainly paid off, and it paved the way for bigger and better creative risks to come.

Gomez breathes life into Kygo's EDM hit "It Ain't Me."

"Who's waking up to drive you home when you're drunk and all alone?" she sings. "Who's gonna walk you through the dark side of the morning? It ain't me."

What a scorching, ingenious way to tell an ex, "you need me but I don't need you."

Gomez lends a sense of authenticity to Kygo's formulaic folk-pop production. Her imperfect voice is actually a strength here: It strains and crackles, lilts and soars, beautifully contrasting the glossy dance floor bait and making you believe every word of her righteous indignation.

"Perfect" is captivating, raw, and even a little twisted.

As Sal Cinquemani noted for Slant magazine, Gomez is at her best on "Revival" when she reinterprets well-worn pop music tropes with sincerity and self-awareness — that is, an awareness that no human experience is straightforward or correct, that every emotion has layers and grooves.

That strength is illustrated on "Perfect," a song that Gomez described as so deeply personal that she almost left it off the album entirely.

"Jealousy and infidelity are common themes in pop music, but Gomez's obsession, her desperation to understand what she supposedly lacks, bleeds into a Sapphic fantasy on 'Perfect,'" Cinquemani wrote. "Her rival isn't someone to be resented or envied, but embraced, even consumed."

One of her earliest hits, "Love You Like a Love Song," holds up to this day.

"Love You Like a Love Song" is gloriously campy. As highlighted in its eclectic karaoke-themed music video, it revels in its own Eurodisco weirdness.

Despite the song's ostensibly romantic premise, Gomez sounds almost bored, almost mechanical, and that's what makes it work — it's like a love song, but not quite.