As exhausting as it was to keep up with Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber's nearly decade-long
on-again-off-again relationship, it's even harder to track their post break-up drama.
So did you catch what the singer was serving?
Here's how Selena got back at the Beebz.
In 2013, Gomez and her pals rehearsed an entire dance routine to the song "Everybody Knows"
by Dustin Tavella.
Some outlets speculated Gomez was mocking Bieber because she wore sweats and a hoodie,
which almost anyone would wear to dance.
But chances are she actually was shading the Beebz.
Fellow dancer and choreographer for the video, Charity Baroni, tweeted then deleted, via
E! News:
"We danced tonight.
It was awesome.
Especially because we dedicated it to someone…and then ate Chinese food after."
Gomez later appeared in the official music video for "Everybody Knows", without the hoodie.
About a week after the dance video dropped, Gomez appeared on David Letterman to promote
her movie, Spring Breakers.
And when Letterman asked her if she was still mixing it up with Bieber, she said no, adding,
"No.
I'm single, yeah."
"You're fine?"
"I'm so good."
Letterman then brought up his most recent interview with Bieber from June 2012, in which
Bieber said Letterman made him uncomfortable by verbally attacking him and rubbing his
tattoos.
The late night host claimed,
"The last time he was on, I made him cry."
"Well, then, that makes two of us."
Despite trying to give the impression she was totally over Bieber, Gomez dredged up
their relationship again in 2013 for her song "Love Will Remember."
In a voicemail he left the singer, which she then added to her track, Bieber can be heard
telling the starlet,
"I just want to call and tell you that I love you so, so, so, so much.
I just wanted to let you know that you are my princess…You are the love of my life."
"I think it was beautifully said."
Though it was likely a strategic move to get press for the track, it may have been less
opportunistic and more romantic: A source told E! News that Bieber was fine with her
using the voicemail, noting that she actually sent him the then-unreleased track months
earlier as a Valentine's Day gift.
The source claimed,
"It was after they broke up and she told him she wanted him to remember the better times.
Justin was blown away by it."
Gomez had another hit on her hands with "The Heart Wants It Wants," and she predictably
used her connection to her famous ex while doing press for the single.
She discussed the track with Ryan Seacrest, telling him that she got Bieber's blessing
before releasing the song.
While Gomez never explicitly said Bieber's name, she revealed,
"No, I just wanted to say, 'This is what I want, this is where I am in my professional
life, things changed in my personal life, things changed.'"
Admitting that she may have made poor decisions in the past, she couldn't help but also throw
Bieber under the bus, adding,
"And so did he, and that's why, I feel like, we went through all that to only make us better."
Remember how Gomez had a hand in making the Internet think Bieber and Barbara Palvin may
have hooked up when he performed at the 2012 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show?
It turns out there may have been fire to that smoke, Gomez just singled out the wrong supermodel.
E! News reported that it was actually Miranda Kerr, who was married to Orlando Bloom at
the time, who may have gotten a little too close with Bieber at the infamous show.
Kerr's attorneys denied it, and by October 2013, Kerr and Bloom called it quits.
Then in 2016, TMZ spotted Gomez getting very close with Bloom in Las Vegas, though sources
close to Gomez insisted that nothing shady went down.
Regardless, their public hangs were very much interpreted as a clear signal to one Mister
Bieber.
Exactly a day after "Lose You To Love Me" was released, Gomez dropped "Look At Her Now,"
in which she sings of a former relationship, saying quote, "she's glad she dodged a bullet."
Gomez later explained her thoughts about what we can guess was her experience with Bieber,
on The Zach Sang Show, saying,
"You're in a phase of life where you experience love for the first time, and I think that
can just be a little toxic."
Saying that the so-called love that she felt in the past was codependent in nature, she
likened it to an addiction to difficult feelings, and added,
"You think, 'Oh that's love.'
I believed that for a long time.
So I've been super super single."
In the interview, she also talked about whether she wants the person she co-wrote her songs
about to hear them.
Claiming her intentions are indeed good, and that yes, she would want someone she wrote
about to hear her music, she said,
"I always want to come from a place that's genuine, and when I feel like some things
haven't been said, then I get to turn that into art."
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