A handful of Selena Gomez fans believe that her song “Younger and Hotter Than Me” might feature a subtle nod to BFF Taylor Swift.
Gomez, 32, dropped her new album I Said I Loved You First, a collaboration with fiancé Benny Blanco, on Friday, March 21. On the emotional ballad “Younger and Hotter Than Me,” Gomez addresses her child star past — and previous failed romances.
“For thinkin’ you were different / Wish I never loved you,” Gomez sings. “We’re not gettin’ any younger / But your girlfriends seem to.”
It, naturally, didn’t take eagle-eyed fans long to jump to the conclusion that the chorus lyrics (see above) appeared to reference a hit written and performed by Swift, 35.
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“And I was never good at tellin’ jokes, but the punch line goes / ‘I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age,’” Swift sings on the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” a track widely rumored to be about Swift’s brief age-gap fling with Jake Gyllenhaal. (The lengthy version of the Red song dropped in 2021 on its rerecorded album.)
Neither Gomez, Blanco, 37, nor Swift have addressed whether “Younger and Hotter Than Me” was meant to replicate “All Too Well,” though the women have been close friends since the early 2000s.
Gomez and Swift initially met in 2008 while dating brothers Nick Jonas and Joe Jonas, respectively.
“I knew from when I met [Selena] I would always have her back,” Swift told The Wall Street Journal in 2020. “In my life, I have the ability to forgive people who have hurt me. But I don’t know if I can forgive someone who hurts her.”
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Gomez, for her part, told the outlet that they “clicked instantly.”
“That was my girl,” Gomez gushed at the time. “We both went through s— at the same time. She taught me a lot about how I should be treated at a young age.”
Gomez and Swift have also had front-row seats to each other’s current respective relationships with Blanco and NFL star Travis Kelce. (Both couples have been together since 2023.)
“It was actually really funny. As a couple, we went to Taylor’s party after some award show. I don’t know, it was kind of cute, but I was mortified,” Gomez said on Spotify’s Countdown To series earlier this week. “Apparently, cool people don’t show up to parties on time.”
Blanco, meanwhile, noted that he and Gomez are often the “first people at every single party” they attend as a couple.
“You, like, show up when my mother shows up to a party,” he recalled. “I thought you were going to talk about that nobody knew we were dating and we were hiding the fact that we were dating, so we, like, didn’t even touch each other or really look at each other.”
Blanco proposed to Gomez in December 2024, and Swift was one of the first individuals to pitch herself for the bridal party.
“Yes, I will be the flower girl,” Swift wrote via Instagram comment on the pair’s proposal reveal.
