Mental health is a topic that Selena Gomez has long embraced. In fact, she’s made it an integral part of her brand, Rare Beauty. “Our vision is to create a safe, welcoming space in beauty—and beyond—that supports mental well-being across age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, cultural background, physical or mental ability, and perspective,” as described in Rare Beauty’s mission statement. Mental health is also at the forefront of her 2022 Apple TV+ documentary, My Mind & Me, where she speaks openly about her battle with bipolar disorder, as well as the struggles of living with lupus.
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The Meaning Behind the Song
Released in tandem with the documentary is the title track, “My Mind & Me,” which plays as the credits roll. The song is a culmination of the topics discussed in the documentary, with Gomez coming out on the other side stronger. Gomez wrote the song with Amy Allen, Michael Pollack, Jonathan Bellion, Stefan Johnson, and Jordan K. Johnson, the latter two of whom are part of the hit songwriting production team The Monsters & Strangerz, who also handled the song’s production.
The team got together at a house in the desert of Palm Springs, California, and wrote and recorded “My Mind & Me” over the course of four days. The song’s origins begin with Gomez’s intimate diary entries that she shared with the team. “In a way, it saved me from having to talk again about all this stuff that I was feeling,” Gomez told Variety. “I think being honest and coming from that place turns out always the best music.” The lyrics read autobiographically, as Gomez sings of losing herself while fighting an invisible, internal monster that won’t leave her be. A particularly striking set of lyrics come at the end of the first verse where Gomez professes that she feels like the victim of a car accident where passersby gawk at the disaster rather than stopping to help.
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“Selena shared with us what parts of her life would be covered in the documentary, as well as her intimate diary entries and poems,” Pollack explained of the writing process to Variety. “Once we had the overarching concept of feeling at odds with your own mind, the song just kind of wrote itself,” added Allen. “It felt like a dream session because it’s so rare for a song to come out so naturally.”
My mind and me, we don’t get along sometimes / And it gets hard to breathe, but I wouldn’t change my life / And all of the crashin’ and burnin’ and breakin’, I know now / If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now / My mind and me, Gomez sings in the vulnerable chorus. “I felt super connected to what I was singing and what I was saying,” she recalled of recording “My Mind & Me.” “Honestly, it was therapeutic for me.”
The superstar is currently working on new music that reflects her life on the other side of the person she was in “My Mind & Me,” showing fans how she’s moving into a brighter stage of life. “‘My Mind and Me’ is a little sad, but it’s also a really nice way of putting a button on the documentary part of life, and then it’ll just be fun stories of me living my life and going on dates and having conversations with myself,” she told Rolling Stone in 2022. “I feel like it’s going be an album that’s like, ‘Oh, she’s not in that place anymore; she’s actually just living life.’”
“My Mind & Me” reached the Top 30 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart. It was shortlisted for Best Original Song at the 2023 Academy Awards.
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