New Selena Gomez album Rare is her most meaningful to date, covering her relationships and health scares

Selena Gomez has returned to music with ‘Rare’, her first album since the platinum-certified ‘Revival’ in 2015

The album introduces the former Disney Channel star as an artist with distinct sensitivities and a clear point of view

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Selena Gomez (pictured in November) marks a return to music with her new album, “Rare” – her first since 2015’s “Revival”. Photo: TNS

Published: 1:30am, 14 Jan 2020Updated: 4:50am, 14 Jan 2020

Call this one “Living Documented”.

Three months after the premiere of Living Undocumented – an acclaimed reality series about undocumented immigrants that she helped shepherd to Netflix – Selena Gomez has returned to music with “Rare”, her first album since the platinum-certified “Revival” in 2015.

Fans of the pop singer and burgeoning filmmaker know she’s been through plenty in the intervening half-decade, including break-ups (and make-up) with singers Justin Bieber and The Weeknd, struggles with depression and anxiety, even a kidney transplant that stemmed from complications of lupus – an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks normal, healthy tissue.

Yet the 27-year-old Gomez, a former Disney Channel star who seemed to get into music initially to sell merchandise, hasn’t talked much about these events; what’s known – or assumed – has come mostly from the breathless media coverage of her perpetually trending topic of a life.

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez during the 2011 MuchMusic Video Awards in Toronto. Photo: AP

She finally has her say on “Rare”, her third and most meaningful solo disc, which addresses both the romantic and health-related matters as well as the overarching experience of being as closely scrutinised as anyone with 165 million followers on Instagram is.

“Is there a place where I can hide away?” she wonders in the LP’s last track, A Sweeter Place, before letting her mind wander to imagine just such a spot: “Out of the scene/ Out in the wild … Up in the clouds/ Far from the crowds.”