You’d be forgiven if you thought Selena Gomez & the Scene’s third album in three years, 2011's When the Sun Goes Down, might show signs of a dip in quality control due to cranking out albums so quickly. You’d be wrong, though, because When the Sun Goes Down is actually an improvement over 2010's Year Without Rain. Where that record tried to position Gomez as a more serious and adult artist with varying levels of success, here she’s back to mostly being a young and breezy, happy-go-lucky pop singer. With a couple exceptions, the songs are sassier, lighter, and more fun. Her vocals are more spirited, the arrangements less reliant on heavy synths, and overall, there’s a more playful feeling to the record that’s more in keeping with her first album.

The big news for Selena Gomez before the release of her sixth album, Rare, is that she finally had a number one single after years of getting close. The introspective and emotionally raw ballad "Lose You to Love Me" surrounded Gomez's aching vocals with sparse piano, swirling strings, and lush background vocals, and connected instantly with her fans and anyone who ever had to ditch someone in order to save themselves. That song, and the record it appears on, mark something of a turning point in her career.

On her first Spanish-language EP, 2021's Revelación, Selena Gomez conjures a romantic atmosphere that balances chic studio-cool with warm vulnerability. It's a mature sound and one that builds nicely upon her genre-blending 2020 studio album Rare, which found Gomez pushing the stylistic boundaries of her mainstream aesthetic, experimenting with French disco, R&B, and some Latin-influenced rhythms. It was also one of her most intimate-sounding albums, revealing diary-like lyrics about personal feelings and desires. On Revelación, she remains just as artistically fearless, embracing her Latin roots and further pushing her sound in a sophisticated pop direction.