“I wanted to share my story, because I am very proud of who I am,” says Selena Gomez. The award-winning singer, songwriter, actress, and producer is the subject of the latest YouTube’s Artist Spotlight Stories.
In it, Gomez talks about her family’s history of immigrating to the United States and her deep sense of responsibility and pride in being a Mexican woman. Gomez weaves her personal history through an illustrated storybook; starting with her grandparents in Mexico, to her father being a fan of Selena Quintanilla (for whom she was named), and all the way through the present date.
In addition to being one-third of a trio on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building (which just secured a second season this week), Gomez dropped her first-ever Spanish language album earlier this year.
“I wasn’t perfect but I definitely did my best,” she says in the mini-documentary now available on her YouTube page. “Every part of this project was built to be solely a Spanish record,” she explains. Gomez is candid about her learning Spanish for the record,“Revelación,” revealing that she worked with coaches in order to enjoy singing in another language, a language she now says she is more comfortable singing in than English.
“Revelación,” dropped in March of 2021 and it marked the first No. 1 for Gomez on the Latin Album Charts. “If I can speak to the Latinx community, I would say, ‘Be proud of who you are. You are meant to be exactly where you were meant to be, however it looks, whatever it may be. Don’t stop trying,’” says Selena.