No Album, Just Hits: Inside Selena Gomez’s Droplet Era – Ty

 

One of the best pop eras of the 2010s wasn’t even an album era. It [music] was Selena Gomez’s 2016 to 2019 droplet era when she was just releasing a bunch of standalone singles instead of a full project. [music] In fact, this era was so big that she surpassed Drake and became the artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify in 2018.

During this time, it wasn’t really common for mainstream artists to release standalone singles over the course of two or three years when they weren’t in an album cycle. Most artists would release an album and then about 2 years later release another one without really releasing anything in between. But Selena really used the time between her 2015 album [music] Revival and her 2020 album Rare to experiment with this droplet era.

This was her time to showcase her versatility [music] as an artist, and that is exactly what she did. I’m going to talk all about Selena Gomez’s droplet era in this episode of the Bop Bible. But before I do, thank you so much for deciding to tune into this episode today. If you’re new here, welcome. I hope that you like this episode so much that you decide to go and stream every other episode of this podcast.

And if you’re not new, welcome back. Please make sure to follow the podcast on whatever platform you’re using and rate it five stars. I will be very happy if I see the ratings go up after this episode. I’m also going to be introducing some segments in this episode, which I am super excited about. So, obviously, I’ll be talking about the roll out and the singles of the era, but I’ll also include the best performance of the era, and then I’ll talk about the most underrated song from the era.

and if I had to remove a song, what it would be. So stick around for the full episode so you do not miss these segments. But first, as always, I’m going to start with where Selena was at this point in her career. So in 2015, Selena Gomez released her album Revival. And I actually did a full podcast deep dive episode on the Revival era.

So definitely check that out. This is kind of like a part two to the episode because I really wanted to showcase what Selena was doing in her music career between the years of 2015 and 2019. But she released Revival and it was a massive success. I mean, Revival had three top 10 singles and became a number one album.

It was Selena’s first album outside of Disney and really solidified her as a main pop girl. Only a year after Selena released Revival, she started teasing another album which she was referring to as SG2 because it was her second album with like full creative control under her new contract with Innercope Records. While she was on the revival tour, she tweeted a photo with some of her collaborators and said, “After a few weeks in the studio bus, safe to say we are very close to album number two. # SG2.

” So, it seemed like she was starting a whole new album era in 2017 when she released her first solo single that year, which we’re going to get into. But first, let’s talk about the collaborations that she released before that because they were a huge part of this droplet era. So, in 2016, Selena Gomez released her first collaboration of the droplet era, which was We Don’t Talk Anymore with Charlie Puth.

Whoever’s idea it was to have Selena Gomez and Charlie Poose’s voices together on a song deserves a raise because their voices blended so well together on this track. The song explores the difficulty of transitioning from being in a relationship with someone to being in a platonic friendship with them. It really was just the perfect breakup duet and it was a huge success.

it reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 right after Selena’s revival era. So, it was kind of like the general public was not tired of her at all because she had all these top 10 hits from the revival era and then immediately after had this top 10 hit with Charlie Puth. And the best promo a collaboration can get is some sort of dating rumor.

At the time, Selena and Charlie were rumored to be in a relationship, which they both denied at the time, but a few years later, Charlie kind of confirmed it to Billboard. Charlie confirmed to Billboard in 2018 that it was a very short-lived relationship. But these rumors coming out at the same time this song dropped really helped the performance of the song.

In the last episode when I was talking about the revival era, I mentioned how Selena almost continued the era with another single after Killim with Kindness which was almost sober. But I’m honestly really glad that Selena decided to end the era when she did and then release we don’t talk anymore. Even though Sober would have been a great single off of Revival, I think by that time Revival had already done its thing and this song just came at the perfect time.

So, as I mentioned, We Don’t Talk Anymore was still kind of part of the revival era because Selena released it when she was still on the revival tour. She even promoted the song by bringing Charlie out on stage during one of the revival concerts. So, I feel like the droplet era didn’t really start to kick in fully until 2017 when she released It Ain’t Me with Kigo.

When I think of EDM in 2017, I think of It Ain’t Me by Kaigo and Selena Gomez. Now, Selena wasn’t an original writer on this song, but she definitely connected with the lyrics. The song is about leaving a toxic relationship and feeling the liberty of knowing that you won’t be caught up in their mess anymore.

The song feels very nostalgic as Selena reflects on a relationship with someone who she has a very long history with. She sings in the chorus, “Who’s going to walk you through the dark side of the morning? Who’s going to rock you when the sun won’t let you sleep? who’s waking up to drive you home when you’re drunk and all alone, who’s going to walk you through the dark side of the morning. It ain’t me.

And she sounds so good on this song. Like, you can tell she really felt these lyrics when she was recording it in the studio. Fans at the time were convinced that this song was about Justin Bieber, who she was in a very on and off relationship with, which I touch on more in the previous episode on the revival era.

The writers of this song were Brian Lee, Andrew Watt, and Alli Temposie. The trio, who also worked on the song Let Me Love You by Justin Bieber, which I think is very interesting. But Alli Temposie told your EDM, “Usually we’ll wait around for a few months, try pitching a song to different artists, and hopefully something sticks.

” When Selena heard it, she loved it. She heard it about a month after we wrote it. And then she said in a separate interview to L, I think at that time in her life, the song spoke to her. So she was basically saying that she knew kind of like what Selena was going through at this point in her life. I mean, Selena was in a highly publicized relationship for so long with Justin Bieber.

So, you know, people in general, fans knew what she was going through. So, it makes sense why this song would speak to her. It Ain’t Me became a top 10 smash hit. So, it really was the perfect song to lead into Selena’s next release, which was a solo single. So, in May of 2017, Selena started teasing a song called Bad Liar on her Instagram.

Part of the campaign for Bad Liar was Selena doing a photo shoot with Petra Collins, who I feel like was a very important person in the droplet era because Selena was doing so many different things visually during this time and a big reason for that was Petra. Petra had photographed Selena back in 2015, but Bad Liar was really the first time they started working together on Selena’s music.

One of the most captivating photo shoots Selena has ever done was the photo shoot for Bad Liar when she was laying down with a hospital bracelet on that said fall risk and a gauze bandage. I remember being confused when these images came out. I was like, is Selena okay? Like why does she have this hospital bandage on? Is this part of the song? But hearing Selena’s explanation of why they did this, I was just like, wow, this is art.

Selena told MTV News that they did this photo shoot right after Selena got back from the hospital for her lupus treatment. Selena’s lupus diagnosis is something that I touch on more in the revival episode. But yeah, so she was getting the lupus treatment and came back immediately did this photo shoot and she mentioned that she decided to do this because it went along perfectly with the song because it had that idea of not being able to hide what you’re going through.

Bad Liar is all about trying to hide the feelings that you’re developing for someone. So, I just thought this photo shoot was a genius concept to go along with the song. For Bad Liar, Selena worked with Julia Michaels and Justin Transfer again, who were two of Selena’s main collaborators during the Revival era. So, the fact that she was working with them again was really cool because they had worked on some of the best songs on Revival.

Hands to Myself, Good for You, so many songs. Part of what makes this song so good is the fact that Selena sampled the baseline in the band Talking Head’s 1977 song Psycho Killer. At the time, it was just her most experimental pop song. And looking back, I think that this song was so important in Selena figuring out what her sound was and how she wanted to express herself lyrically.

This song is very Selena and also very Julia Michaels. Like, you can listen to the song and just tell that Julia Michaels was part of it. It was just a major departure from the sound revival. Like it was a lot more alternative and indie sounding than anything Selena had done before. The music video for Bad Liar is also one of my favorite music videos Selena has ever done because she was acting.

In the music video, Selena plays not one, not two, not three, but four different characters. She plays a shy high school girl, a male teacher who’s the girl’s father, the girl’s mother, and the female gym teacher who in the end turns out to be the school girl’s crush. The music video just perfectly went along with the lyrics of the song because the high school girl is trying to hide her feelings for this gym teacher, but has a hard time doing that.

Selena also teased her next single, Fetish, at the end of the Bad Liar video by including a scene from the set of Fetish’s music video, which I loved because it felt like an era. Even though Selena wasn’t doing an album, it just felt like these songs were connected. Billboard named Bad Liar by Selena Gomez the best song of 2017.

And let’s just go through some of the songs that it was ahead of on this list. It was ahead of Despacito by Luis Fony, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber, Bodak Yellow by Cardi B, Humble by Kendrick Lamar, and I feel it coming by The Weekend. I remember when this list came out, people were so confused.

But honestly, I was like, “Okay, Billboard has taste because Bad Liar really was the perfect pop song and it sounded so fresh. It didn’t sound like anything from that year.” As I mentioned, Selena teased her next single, Fetish, with the Bad Liar music video, and she released the song Fetish in summer of 2017. Fetish was a completely different vibe from Bad Liar, while Bad Liar was more alternative indie pop sounding.

Fetish was trap pop that kind of went along with the sound that she was going for with Good for You, but I feel like with Fetish, she just expanded on that further. I feel like it’s Good for You’s wiser, older sister. She took the sound of Good for You and the vibe of it featuring a rapper and completely elevated it for Fetish featuring Gucci Mane.

She made it even more sensual with the lyrics and it had even more of a trap pop sound than Good for You. The music video also has to be some of Selena’s best visuals she has ever done. She worked with Petra Collins again, but instead of Petra just directing a photo shoot, she directed the entire music video for Fetish.

The music video included Selena doing some strange things like eating lipstick, throwing groceries, and tasting glass. So, it just really highlighted the obsessiveness of the lyrics. Selena also worked with the Futuristics who produced this song. And when you look at some of the other songs that the Futuristics produced in 2017, it just makes sense that they also produced Fetish.

They produced Him and I by Hollyy and Gez and Bad Things by Machine Gun Kali and Camila Cabo. Both of which had that similar trap pop vibe. Now Fetish peaked at number 27 on the Hot 100. So it wasn’t a massive hit, but I feel like it really did turn into one of Selena’s most timeless song and a song that people look back on today and they’re like, “Wow, was why wasn’t this song bigger?” It definitely succeeded in showcasing her artistry both sonically and visually.

And I think the timing of the release was perfect because this was around the time that the kinky movie 50 Shades of Gray was very popular. So, I mean, Fetish literally sounds like it could be a song on that soundtrack. So, when Selena put out Bad Liar and Fetish, fans were wondering why she wasn’t really promoting her music the way she used to.

Selena during the revival era was everywhere. I mean, she was promoting interviews. She was at award shows. She was at SNL doing performances. And we just weren’t seeing that same promotion with Fetish and Bad Liar. I honestly think that Bad Liar and Fetish could have been top 10 hits with Revival level promo. But Selena announced in September of 2017 that the reason she wasn’t promoting her album was because she needed a kidney transplant due to her lupus.

She shared this news onto Instagram with a photo of her and Francia Raisa, who was Selena’s kidney donor. So, obviously, there was a lot going on behind the scenes that people did not know about until Selena shared that news onto Instagram. Looking back on this time, I’m honestly surprised Selena was even dropping music in the year of 2017 because she was just dealing with so much in her personal life.

But I think the fact that she was releasing music throughout this year really shows how much she loves and cares about her fans. Because despite going through all of these struggles in her own life, she wanted to provide music for her fans. Before Selena revealed this news, fans were definitely confused on whether or not she was in an album era because she was just releasing these songs without announcing a full album.

But I feel like this news revealed that she was not in an album era and that she was just releasing songs as droplets. And she continued doing this in 2017. About a month after revealing the news of her kidney transplant, she released another collaboration, Wolves with Marshmallow. Wolves is about the obstacles one can face when trying to reach someone or something.

So when you hear this song, you might interpret it as Selena singing about a relationship and trying to connect with someone and kind of having struggles along the way. But the way I interpret Wolves is that it is a song about survival. And Selena likely connected with it so much because of her lupus journey and her getting a kidney transplant that same year.

In the pre chorus and chorus, she sings, “I want to feel the way that we did that summer night. Drunk on a feeling alone with the stars in the sky. I’ve been running through the jungle. I’ve been running with the wolves to get to you. To get to you.” So, Selena likely connected with the song so much because she was going through so many obstacles in 2017 and was trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In fact, Selena told Zayn Lo for Beats One at the time that the lyrics deeply reflected what she was feeling during the time she recorded the song. The song reached the top 20 in the US. So again, it wasn’t a top 10 smash hit, but was definitely one of the biggest EDM songs of 2017. I said earlier that when I think of EDM in 2017, I think of It Ain’t Me.

And I also think of Wolves with Marshmallow. Something I love about the Wolves era is that we actually got a live performance of this song at the 2017 AMAs. So, after putting out four songs in 2017, we finally got a live performance and visually it was just beautiful. Selena had her blonde hair at the time and the stage set was a misty forest.

So, yeah, visually it was just very captivating and it was just such a vulnerable performance. I mean, it was Selena’s first time performing in over a year, and as I was talking about, I think that Wolves really connected with her because of her journey throughout that year. So, her getting up on stage and performing the song was just a really special moment.

I think that Selena is really in her bag when it comes to meaningful dance music. You know, that storytelling type of dance music that we don’t always see. I feel like dance music a lot of times is very production focused and not lyrically driven. But with all of Selena’s dance music, I feel like she was doing both. You know, it was very production focused while also having that storytelling element.

And that is something we saw again in her next single, Back to You. So, Selena released Back to You in May of 2018 as part of 13 Reason Why season 2’s soundtrack, and 13 Reasons Why was a show that Selena Executive produced. Back to You is about leaving a toxic ex, but constantly finding yourself wanting to go back to them.

This song includes one of my favorite lyrics ever in a pop song. It says, “Took you like a shot. Thought that I could chase you with a cold evening. Let a couple years water down how I feel about you. I just think that that is such a beautiful lyric that says a lot. Like it says that she is trying to leave this person but can’t.

Fans at the time were convinced that the song was about Justin Bieber because Selena and Justin briefly reconnected between the end of 2017 and early 2018. And it makes sense why the song would be about him. I mean, like I said, it’s about a toxic relationship with someone that you have a long history with.

you know, you shouldn’t go back to them, but something in you was like, I want to. I love how Selena treated this like a full single instead of just a soundtrack single because she did a whole music video for this song, and it was a pretty good music video, too. The video includes Selena leaving a party with a boy to go and steal a car, and then they end up having this kind of like romantic connection.

She ends up burning the car and then goes back to the party, finds the guy again, and the cycle starts all over. So, the video made no sense, but it kind of mirrored the lyrics of the song about how you’re always finding yourself returning to the same person even after some chaos happens. While Back to You was taking off, Selena Gomez surpassed Drake and became the artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify.

I remember people were so pressed when this happened, saying things like, “Who listens to Selena Gomez?” Everybody listens to Selena Gomez, and if you don’t, you’re lying to yourself, and it’s sad. But that just goes to show how Selena was really dominating during this time when she hadn’t even put out an album since Revival.

Back to You peaked at number 18. So, it did chart higher than Selena’s previous solo singles, Bad Liar and Fetish, but it wasn’t a top 10 hit, unfortunately. But it still did its thing. I mean, yeah, the fact that she became the artist with the most monthly listeners goes to show that people were tuned in to this song. So, another way Selena was experimenting with her sound during the droplet era was by releasing music in Spanish, and that’s what we saw with the song Takiaki with DJ Snake, Osuna, and Cardi B.

This was an iconic collaboration that went number one in 16 countries. It didn’t go number one in the US. It peaked at number 11 here, which goes to show that the US is tasteless, but it really was a global hit. I love this song and I love that it brought back Selena singing in Spanish because I think at that point she had only done the Spanish version of A Year Without Rain and that was her only Spanish song.

So DJ Snake bringing back the Latina Selena Gomez for this track was everything. Do you guys remember how everybody was gagged when they performed it together at Coachella 2? Like I remember being just so surprised because Selena hadn’t performed live since that performance of Wolves in 2017, but then in 2019 at Coachella, DJ Snake brings out Selena, Cardi B, and Osuna.

I am so jealous of anybody who was in that crowd. I did not go to Coachella that year, but I remember wishing I would have after seeing that performance. But yeah, Takitakei was great because again, Selena was kind of doing this EDM vibe, but also bringing elements of reon and was singing in Spanish. So, she was experimenting a lot with this track.

After Takitaki came another collaboration that was that same vibe of being a dance pop song with Spanish lyrics, which was I can’t get enough. Honestly, I feel like with I Can’t Get Enough, they were just trying for a Takitaki part two and it didn’t really work out because let’s just be honest, the song wasn’t as good as Takitaki.

This song was a collaboration with Jay Balvin, Tiny and Benny Blanco, who as we know is now Selena’s man. They got together years later. So, looking back at this video, I feel like it’s cute because Selena and Benny are dancing together. Benny’s dressed as a large teddy bear. So, yeah, looking back at it, it is cute because this is when they released their first like major collaboration together.

He had produced songs on Revival before, but this was their first collaboration with him listed as an artist. This song peaked at number 66, so honestly, it is kind of forgettable. I mean, the only reason I really remembered it was because Selena and Benny included it on their 2025 album, I Said I Love You First, which by the way, I love that album, but I just thought it was funny that they put this song from 2019 on it.

So, now let’s get into these segments. Starting with the most underrated song from the droplet era. The most underrated song from Selena’s Droplet era is definitely Fetish. Fetish doesn’t only sound like a top 10 hit, it sounds like a number one hit even to this day. Like if Selena released Fetish in 2025, I would be like, “Okay, this makes sense.

Let’s get this to number one.” Even though it wasn’t a smash hit at the time, I feel like it did gain a lot of recognition over the years with a lot of fans wanting Selena to go back to that trap pop sound of Fetish. She even said that the song Cowboy on her 2025 album, I Said I Love You First, kind of follows that same direction of Fetish and Good for You.

So yeah, I feel like this song deserved so much better. I wish we would have gotten performances of Fetish. Obviously, knowing what Selena was going through behind the scenes, we know why she wasn’t performing the song. But yeah, a Fetish live performance. Imagine how iconic that would be. Next, let’s talk about a song that I would remove from this era if I had to choose one, which I feel like you guys probably already know this based off of what I was just saying, but yeah, it’s I Can’t Get Enough.

It’s cute that it was Selena and Benny’s first official song together, but it was just clear that they were trying to reheat Takiaki’s Nachos, and it didn’t work out. I mean, the song did kind of flop. The best performance of this era. Okay, so as I was saying, we didn’t really get a whole lot of performances with the droplet era.

We really only got Selena’s 2017 AMA’s performance when she sang Wolves and the Coachella performance of Takitaki. So choosing between those, they’re just so different. Obviously, one is like a televised performance, one was a festival performance, but honestly, I would have to say the Coachella performance of Takitaki because it was just so unexpected and yeah, everybody was just gagged at the sight of Selena Gomez.

I remember watching videos and you could just hear the whole crowd screaming when she came out. Even though it wasn’t a televised performance, I know if I was in that crowd, I would have been having the time of my life. My next segment is what can other pop stars learn from this era? I feel like pop stars can learn a lot from Selena’s 2016 to 2019 droplet era.

One thing that Selena really showed with this era is that you shouldn’t be afraid to take risks. I mean, Bad Liar was a completely different direction from Selena’s album revival, but it worked out for her. The space between album eras is the perfect time to experiment with your sound and figure out what people like.

Selena did dance pop, indie pop, trap pop, she was singing in Spanish. Like, you really cannot say that Selena Gomez is not a versatile artist when she was doing so many different genres during the droplet era. So, I feel like the droplet era was really the time when Selena Gomez figured out her sound and developed a lot more confidence as a songwriter.

The droplet era allowed her to feed her fans during a time when she wasn’t ready to put out a full album. I remember during the time as a fan, I was kind of annoyed that she was taking so long to release an album, but looking back, I am just grateful that the Selena Gomez stands got to experience the droplet era because these are some of the best songs in her discoraphy.

Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode. Again, please [music] rate it five stars on whatever platform you’re using. Follow the podcast so [music] you don’t miss whenever I put out an episode. And I will see you guys next time.