Selena Gomez's "Back To You" Summer Anthem

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published 6 June 2018

When it comes to naming the Song of the Summer, Selena Gomez gets robbed year after year. But that all could change in 2018, because she just dropped the video for her track “Back to You,” and it has all the makings of a hot-weather mega-bop.

The video in question unravels like a summery French New Wave film. Plot-wise, it involves Selena and an attractive man with whom Selena vacates and then returns to a bisexually-lit party, some grand theft auto, and a series of romantic hijinks in a field. Stylistically, it’s very Call Me By Justin Bieber’s Name.

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The point is, if we don’t hear this song on repeat for the next several months then we will have denied Selena Gomez the Song of the Summer title thrice—thrice!—and it’ll be proof that we’re living in a simulation.

It’s hard to say what really makes something The Song of the Summer. It’s not a tempo issue—a slow jam can absolutely get there—but the vibe is everything. It’s a song that, while sometimes cloyingly unavoidable, ends up being perfectly of the time in which it was released. And in 2017, Selena coulda been a contender. She dropped “Bad Liar,” the “Psycho Killer”-copping ode to socially awkward horniness that should have been unavoidable, but which still felt more like a sleeper hit. Don’t get me wrong, it was big, but it wasn’t the Song of the Summer. (That title belongs to “Despacito,” which is fair.)

Before that, it could have been her sultry 2016 jam “Same Old Love,” another impressively-large bop but, again, not the Song of the Summer. (That was “One Dance,” which, again, is fair.)

Now it’s 2018, and we can’t let “Back to You” suffer a similar fate. It’s the perfect summer jam, thanks to an undeniable but not over-the-top hook. Plus, it's sexy and a little melancholy and so lovely that it actually forgives her mercifully-denied 2010 attempt at a summer jam, “Summer’s Not Hot,” the over-produced, Nyan cat nightmare which I believe violates the Geneva Convention.

So this summer, pick "Back to You" for Song of the Summer. I’m with Her.

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Cady has been a writer and editor in Brooklyn for about 10 years. While her earlier career focused primarily on culture and music, her stories—both those she edited and those she wrote—over the last few years have tended to focus on environmentalism, reproductive rights, and feminist issues. She primarily contributes as a freelancer journalist on these subjects while pursuing her degrees. She held staff positions working in both print and online media, at Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and continued this work as a senior editor, first at Glamour until 2018, and then at Marie Claire magazine. She received her Master's in Environmental Conservation Education at New York University in 2021, and is now working toward her JF and Environmental Law Certificate at Elisabeth Haub School of Law in White Plains.