As we travel through the crystalline heart that is supposed to belong to “Virgin” Mary, we soon pan out to reveal that this fragile corazón is, in fact, embedded within Selena Gomez’s chest. After all, if she’s going to make this grand foray back to her Mexican roots, it’s only right to bring the Virgin Mary into it with the visuals for the accompanying video for “De Una Vez” (that’s “at once,” for the gringas out there). And sure, Jesus has a Sacred Heart, but Mary has an Immaculate one. The point is, Gomez wants you to know her own is also divine in its ability to heal (though that doesn’t mean she can’t still indirectly throw shade at the ex whose aunt-in-law has been pretending to be Spanish for the past decade, give or take).
With additional regard to the “coincidental” timing, Gomez seems to have a fondness for releasing music in January–as that’s when her last album, Rare, came out in 2020 (the only month of the year where anyone had hope, thus the record’s name being retrospectively ironic). Perhaps it’s part of her Cancer need to nurture during a period generally viewed as dark and depressing to bring the world new and vibrant music. As for “De Una Vez,” it serves as her first “official” Spanish-language song (though she’s dabbled in the past with the likes of “Un Año Sin Lluvia,” “Fantasma de Amor,” “Dices,” a cover of her namesake’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” “Más” and “Taki Taki”).
Directed by Los Pérez, the ethereal video for some reason reminds one of a more coiffed Frida Kahlo chilling at home (sacrilege, yes, but the comparison is there), including an overhead shot of Gomez opening her eyes in bed and rising up among a sea of plants in an unintentionally “I woke up like this” moment. The surreal quality to it intensifies as the camera whip-pans right to reveal she (or some additional version of her) is now in the living room among a plethora of lamps, diaphanously moving as her glowing milagro lights the path when the lamps go dim. Leaning against the wall, cracks in the floral-print paper form before another whip-pan to the right, revealing Gomez sitting at her kitchen table with a contemplative (therefore melancholic) expression. The reflection in the table is not her own, but a cloud-pocked sky, adding further to the magical realism motif.
As “a proud third-generation American-Mexican” born in Texas, it was both only natural that Gomez should be named after Selena Quintanilla and only a matter of time before she decided to take a page from Christina Aguilera’s Mi Reflejo playbook (regardless of Aguilera claiming South American heritage rather than Mexican) and opt for releasing a full-length Spanish album (likely to come out later this year). Making fun of herself for taking so long, Gomez unearthed a tweet from 2011 in which she said, “Can’t wait for y’all to hear the Spanish record 😉 it’s sounding so cool,” adding that she thinks it will be worth the wait.
Considering her perfectionism with regard to the project, it could very well be her version of Shakira “going English,” in some sort of inverse permutation of newfound pop success. Of the process behind recording, Gomez remarked, “It was a lot of work, and look, you cannot mispronounce anything. It is something that needed to be precise, and needed to be respected by the audience I’m going to release this for.” This assertion, too, could easily be a missive directed at Hilaria.
As the “table version” of Gomez continues to sit there, another Selena comes forward toward a burning stove, holding a Polaroid that’s also on fire (is it an image of her and Justin? Or of Justin and Hailey?). More whip-panning eventually leads us into the bathroom where, in what could double as a scene for a horror movie, Gomez is sitting at the edge of the bathtub while her reflection also shows up in the mirror several inches away. Now she’s in a “miscellany” room, lying amid primarily suitcases as records and a guitar start floating up into the air while her beating/glowing heart seems to control the magical happenings around her.
In some sense, the theme of the video echoes what fellow Spanish-speaker-for-profit Jennifer Lopez was trying to say her recent “In the Morning” video is about: catharsis. Getting through a difficult period and being stronger and more serene (and also evidently more supernatural) as a result. And as the bric-a-brac proceeds to fly up through the ceiling, we’re hit over the head with the symbolism that Gomez has at last shed all the trappings of her (literal) baggage. Now all that remains is an empty house that she can finally leave behind in peace.
It’s likely that despite the embarrassment of the “uncovering,” Hilaria Baldwin will be able to do the same (because: being rich). Even if it means turning her back on the fake accent she grew so fond of, perhaps believing it made her sound more appealing (especially to Salma Hayek fetishist Alec Baldwin). Gomez, apparently sharing the same opinion as Hilaria, has expressed that she thinks she sounds better in Spanish as well.
The difference, of course, is that she isn’t appropriating an identity that isn’t hers for the sake of being “chic” in a pop culture tableau that has increasingly come to the conclusion that white is not right. Unless you have the good sense to put out “La Isla Bonita” before the Ethnicity Police came through in the twenty-first century.
