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Selena Gomez recently got candid about her life in the spotlight and bowing out of music.
Despite the success of six top-charting albums with three ranking at No1 on the Billboard 200 chart, the award-winning star is not satisfied with the progress of her musical career.
"I've had moments where I've been like, 'What's the point? Why do I keep doing this?' Lose You to Love Me I felt was the best song I've ever released, and for some people, it still wasn't enough,” says Selena, who is on the April cover of Vogue.
"It's
hard to keep doing music when people don't necessarily take you seriously."
She knows she has a big fan base and is “so thankful” to the people who “enjoy my music” – and for them she is going to release another album, which, she says, will be completely different.
“I want to give it one last try before I maybe retire from music.”
If she does hang up her mic, she said she’ll turn her attention to her acting career and movie production.
Selena is currently shooting the new Hulu series Only Murders in the Building with Steve Martin and Martin Short, which follows the success of her Netflix teen series, 13 Reasons Why. She will also be seen in the upcoming horror movie Dollhouse.
While she’s grateful for her role as Alex Russo on Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place, she worries people still see her as “this Disney girl”.
That job, which
she began at age 15, made her focus on “being perfect. You're considered a
figure kids look up to, and they take that seriously there.
“I think I spent so many years just trying to say the right thing to people for the sake of keeping myself sane.”
She released three albums before she turned 20 and during her international tour for her first solo album in 2014, she checked herself into a rehab facility, burned out and depressed.
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She’d also been diagnosed with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disorder that, in her case, was serious enough to need chemotherapy treatment and later a kidney transplant.
The singer-actress-producer continued to work through it and also had two more stays in treatment centres in 2016 and 2018.
“I knew I couldn’t go on unless I learned to listen to my body and mind when I really needed help,” she says.
Despite her successful career, she still finds herself awake in the early hours of the morning, overcome with anxiety. “I start thinking about my personal life, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ and it becomes this spiral.”
Her recent diagnosis of bipolar disorder has been an important step to managing her life, she told Vogue.
“Once the information was there, it was less scary.”
