Selena Gomez is a multi-talented performer with featured roles on the screen both small and large, and a musical career that reached the summit of the charts from its very beginning and stayed planted there for many years. Her group, Selena Gomez & the Scene, issued a trio of breezy modern pop albums from 2009 to 2011 that each hit the Top Ten. After going solo, she scored a pair of number ones with the more adult-oriented Stars Dance (2013) and Revival (2015), then branched out into new sounds on collaborations with Kygo (‘It Ain’t Me’) and Marshmello (‘Wolves’). Gomez reached the top of the singles chart for the first time with ‘Lose You to Love Me’ (2019), a soul-searching ballad that delved into her real-life relationships and marked a new openness in her lyrical approach. In 2021, she took on Latin pop for the first time with the Revelación EP. Along with her starring role in Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, she was also the subject of the candid 2022 documentary Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, for which she also released the title track, followed by 2023’s electronic-tinged ‘Single Soon’ and 2024’s ‘Love On.’
Born in 1992, Gomez grew up in Texas and got her first break as a cast member on the kids’ TV show Barney and Friends. She landed minor roles in several other TV programs, but it was her affiliation with the Disney Channel — which discovered her during a nationwide talent search in 2004 — that officially jump-started her acting career. Guest appearances on The Suite Life of Zach and Cody and Hannah Montana paved the way for Gomez’s own show, The Wizards of Waverly Place, which premiered in October 2007 and quickly became one of the network’s most popular programs. Gomez began juggling her commitment to The Wizards of Waverly Place with additional projects, including movie roles and a burgeoning singing career. She began branching out into pop music by recording songs for her own Disney projects. She sang the theme song for The Wizards of Waverly Place, recorded several other tunes for the show’s soundtrack, and performed on the soundtrack of the family film Another Cinderella Story. By 2009, she’d also assembled her own teen pop band, Selena Gomez & the Scene, and signed a contract with Hollywood Records. The band’s full-length debut, Kiss & Tell, was released that year and went gold, as did its 2010 follow-up, A Year Without Rain. Gomez continued filming The Wizards of Waverly Place and made her theatrical debut in the 2010 film adaptation of Ramona and Beezus, but her music garnered just as much attention.