Selena Gomez has multiple songs on her and Benny Blanco’s joint album I Said I Love You First with messages to her exes. But on “Don’t Take It Personally,” Gomez turns the tables and has some words for someone very close to her fiancé.
She addresses her jealousy over the person in the first two verses, before noting that Blanco picked her in the end. The song is vague enough that this person could be another love interest of Blanco’s or just a close friend whose relationship with him changed after he started dating Gomez.
I Said I Love You First by Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco
Gomez wishes the person well in the chorus, singing, “Please don’t take it personally / Some things are just meant to be / Don’t waste all your energy / We both know that he loves me / Oh honey, you deserve it / I know you’re gonna find somebody perfect / Pleasе don’t take it personally / Some things arе just meant to be.”
In the narrated edition of her album, Gomez revealed ‘Don’t Take It Personally’ is about her, but maybe not in the way you’d think. She explained, “So this song is another song that actually, we kind of put together in a way where it was actually told to me. So this is actually me in an experience of someone maybe in my past that had gone through whatever they needed to go through to get through life. And this is odd to say but, yes, I’m the person that it happened to.”
Gomez and Blanco spoke about how their album is a reflection of their romantic past, present, and future. They started out as friends first, and Blanco didn’t realize Gomez was romantically interested in him initially. He even talked about trying to set her up with his other friends.
In January, he told Interview magazine, “We were in the session and I was like, ‘You should meet some of my friends. I can hook you up with some dates.’ I hadn’t thought about it at all. And then we were texting afterwards and we decided to get dinner the next day. I guess she thought it was a date and I had no idea it was a date. The second time we hung out, our second date, I was like, ‘Wait, does she like me?’ I was clueless. From then on, it was easy.”
Blanco has had just one other public relationship, with model Elsie Hewitt, who is now dating Pete Davidson. Blanco and Hewitt broke up five years ago in 2020, long before he started dating Gomez in June 2023.
Gomez revealed she and Blanco drew inspiration from friendships for their album, too.
She told her fiancé in a joint interview on Spotify’s Countdown To..., “I would like to say most of this album has nothing to do with what everyone may go to. And I think it’s important for me to say that because I’ve evolved so much, and I have experienced life with new people. I’ve had to go through transitions with friends and lose people in my life and gain new people, and I’ve had a whole new life forever so it’s up for whatever people want but to me it was about both of our pasts and our history and also just inspired by friends and relationships, like some songs were actually meant [to be] about friendships in my life.”
Blanco added that the best part about releasing music is when “a song that you may have written in a moment about something [is] completely perceived as something else to everybody who has listened to it.”
While the song’s subject remains a secret, the lyrics illustrate Gomez letting go of her jealousy to settle into her secure relationship. Read through the full song and listen below:
Verse 1
I know the two of you used to talk like every day
And ever since I came around, it hasn’t been the same
You probably got a dart board of my face right in the middle
He sleeps in my bed, I met his parents, it’s official
Chorus
Please don’t take it personally
Some things are just meant to be
Don’t waste all your energy
We both know that he loves me
Oh honey, you deserve it
I know you’re gonna find somebody perfect
Pleasе don’t take it personally
Some things arе just meant to be
Verse 2
You’re so beautiful, it’s still hard for me to swallow
I used to get so jealous, I would stress eat, drown my sorrows
In a bottle of vodka
And then I remembered that he doesn’t want ya
No, he doesn’t want ya
Chorus
Please don’t take it personally
Some things are just meant to be
Don’t waste all your energy
We both know that he loves me
Oh honey, you deserve it
I know you’re gonna find somebody perfect
Please don’t take it personally
Some things are just meant to be
Bridge
Forever, forever, forever
Oh, forever
Forever and ever
Outro
Please don’t take it personally
