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EOPLE USED TO try to dismiss Selena
Gomez as a mere Disney moppet who
stumbled into the pop-star racket.
But nobody makes this many brilliant
rec ords by accident. Her new single, “Rare,”
is her best ever: She hiccups in her breathy
ASMR whisper, a shy girl riding a bass line
that’s pure confidence. Selena always sings
about her feelings like she’s terrified of them,
which is why some of us relate. She wants to
run and hide, but the bass urges her to stay
and fight. It’s yet another perfect song about
getting bombarded with way more drama
than one girl should ever be asked to handle.
Selena might seem like an enigmatic blank
slate at times, but she’s stuck around for years, while so
many pushier personalities just fade away. She’s assem-
bled the makings of a classic greatest-hits album, from
“Slow Down” in 2013 to “Hands to Myself ” in 2015 to
“Bad Liar” in 2017, always singing in her own awesomely
contorted private language. Her power move is to keep
you asking “Wait, did she really say that? Why is she
talking about the Battle of Troy? ‘Your metaphorical gin
and juice’?” It just adds to her allure.
Lately, she’s had to face high-profile turmoil of the sort
most people have the luxury of suffering through in pri-
vate: lupus, a kidney transplant, breaking up with Justin
Bieber several thousand times, dating the Weeknd. But
she’s ready for it all. Her records come preloaded with
positive messages about healthness and well-fullhood
and self-empowertude, with an ever- escalating sense of
“Seriously, this time I mean it.”
Once upon a time, the world saw Selena as a star
doomed to be defined by her bad romance with Bieber.Some of us are still traumatized by their ap-
pearance together at the 2011 VMAs. He
brought his pet snake. Selena stood by the
Bieb on the red carpet while he introduced
the snake to the cameras: “His name is John-
son!” You could see stoic agony all over her
face, as she seemed to be silently asking,
“How is this happening? Can I go home now?”
Over the years, Selena and her ex batted
hit songs about each other back and forth,
litigating their breakup-makeup drama all
over the radio. Then he abruptly married
someone else. But Selena sounds liberated
— like she’s having the time of her life. So in
“Rare,” she kicks her weirdly sexual toaster
metaphors over that funk throb. She testifies about
emerging from stormy personal tribulations until she’s
“holding hands with the darkness and knowing my heart
is allowed.” Which means... something? When Selena
sings it, it means everything.
It’s an unlikely evolution for a child star who got her
start singing lullabies on Barney and Friends. When she
starred in the 2009 Disney Channel movie Princess Pro-
tection Program, she didn’t even get to play the prin-
cess. Now, on “Rare,” we listen raptly as she sings about
being madly in love with someone she doesn’t like or re-
spect too much. She’s sick of this — and she vows she’s
never going to make the same mistake again. (Spoiler:
She will, as soon as the next song starts.) Her voice is full
of mixed-up confusion, but she battles on through the
emotional chaos. That exquisite tension is what makes
her hits play like a long-running saga about the impos-
sibility of ever getting all those emotions under control.
Well, maybe she could. But why would she want to?College cheerleaders go
for the gold, and we can’t
stop binge-watchingROB
SHEFFIELD
SOUND AND
VISIONL
IKE SO MANY PEOPLE, I
tuned in to the Netflix docu-
series Cheer for a cheap
kick, figuring it’d be a laugh to
visit the parallel universe of col-
lege cheerleading. Instead, it’s
Apocalypse Now with pompoms,
starring real-life coach Monica Al-
dama as the Robert Duvall figure
who rules her squad in a small
Texas town. Cheer goes deep
cover on campus at Navarro Col-
lege. Since most of us rarely think
about cheerleading, except when
Kirsten Dunst needs to learn
some life lessons, it’s disturbing
and fascinating. Monica’s min-
ions brave all the injuries of col-
lege sports, except without even
the hope of turning pro, since —
you hate to mention it — there’s
not much pro cheerleading. They
live for her commands. One of the
team gushes, “I would take a bul-
let for her,” but most of us would
rather take our chances with the
bullet. (It’d finish with you faster.)
It’s not tough to see why America
is obsessed with Cheer: At a time
when our democratic ideals are
smashed to pieces, threatening all
our illusions of leadership, Cheer
offers a fantasy cheer-ocracy,
with Monica as a scarily credible
cheer-tator. But there’s little senti-
mental tough-love cliché, no pre-
tense she’ll make you a stronger
person. Instead, you’ll be lucky to
keep a few of your ribs. R.S.The Wild Pop Drama
of Selena Gomez
Three
Cheers for
Netflix’s
‘Cheer’!
33Coach
Aldama