The Weeknd's Upcoming Song About Selena Gomez Is No Longer Being Released

Here's a perplexing update concerning exes The Weeknd and Selena Gomez (opens in new tab). You might recall last week's news that The Weeknd, under his real name Abel Tesfaye, registered a new song with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). A pretty standard thing for an artist with new music coming out to do, yes—but the song had the very telling title, "Like Selena." Naturally, fans concluded the track would get candid about their former relationship, which ended in October 2017.

However, as Entertainment Tonight reports (opens in new tab), it looks like the song has been scrapped, or at least won't be released in the near future. The page on the ASCAP website, which listed "Like Selena" as a track both written and performed by The Weeknd, has since been taken down. With no other information to go on, it's difficult to speculate exactly what's happening with the song—has The Weeknd had a change of heart, or was the listing just some kind of error? A mystery! 

The Weeknd, of course, is no stranger to exploring his relationships in his lyrics. Fans have already connected his new singles, "Heartless" and "Blinding Lights," (opens in new tab) to his two famous exes—the former seems to refer to his split with Gomez, while on-off girlfriend Bella Hadid was likely the inspiration for the latter.

Gomez' biggest appearance in The Weeknd's music, however, came with last year's single "Call Out My Name," from the surprise album My Dear Melancholy. Lyrics like, "And when times were rough, when times were rough/I made sure I held you close to me," seemed to refer to Gomez' health difficulties, which ultimately led to a kidney transplant, as Elle reports (opens in new tab). More specifically, the line, "I almost cut a piece of myself for your life," seemed to indicate The Weeknd almost donated his own kidney to Gomez (her close friend Francia Raisa was the eventual donor.)

It's clear revisiting his relationship with Gomez is no easy feat for The Weeknd, or at least it wasn't a year ago—while performing "Call Out My Name" at Coachella 2018 (opens in new tab), he came very close to tears. Perhaps "Like Selena" was scrapped because the feelings were just too raw?

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