Selena Gomez on Taylor Swift’s 30th Birthday Gift to Her and the Songs About Her

“Oh, she’ll love this,” Gomez interjected.

“And she pulls out this piece of art,” Blanco continued. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, this is perfect for the living room!’”

“Beautiful,” Gomez said of the piece.

Blanco had no idea it was Swift’s work at first: “You know I’m so into art. I love art. And I said, ‘Who made this painting?’ Like I thought she was going to say like Basquiat or something like crazy. And Selena says, ‘Taylor made this for me for my 30th birthday.’ And it’s one of the best paintings I’ve ever seen.”

Gomez then described the piece and the thoughtful touches Swift added to it: “She did it on an actual cloth, and she painted a beautiful lake. And it was at night, and the moon was there and in the stars…she painted our exact star signs. So for hers [Sagittarius] and mine [Cancer] and she said, ‘Here’s to the next 30 years,’ handsewn. And it says, ‘From Taylor to Selena,’ and it was all sewn by hand so she had it painted or she painted it.”

Gomez was in awe of the effort: “It’s just, instead of writing, ‘Here’s to the next 30 years,’ or printing it, she sewed every letter. It was the sweetest gift.”

The couple then touched on Swift’s famous sourdough bread.

“The other day, she made like fresh sourdough bread, and it looked like it was from a professional bakery,” Blanco said.

Gomez added, “I hope she’ll let us use most of this but when she made bread, she goes, ‘It’s a loaf story.’ Get it?”

The star then reflected on how she genuinely connects with Swift’s music on a deeper level because of their shared history. “A million percent [I connect to her music differently],” she told the group. “Well, ‘Dorothea’ is about me, one of her songs. And I feel like a lot of moments—huge moments that were self-defining from relationships to family to love to hate, all of it in between, we were figuring it out because I was 15 and she was 18, and we didn’t really know what was going on. And so we’ve never seen each other any differently. So when I listen to it, I’m so impressed how it’s eloquently put.”

She added, “So there’s this [unreleased] song Taylor wrote about it, and it was called ‘Family’ and it was over easily a decade ago, insinuating in the lyrics without quoting it, it is basically saying you have these amazing dreams, you want to be in movies, like in every crowd, I still see you. And then her part was you know, you still believe in my stupid dreams like playing stadiums and now when I listen to that song, both of those things—it makes me want to cry—have happened for us. And that’s really sweet because back then she was just like, ‘I just wrote this song about us. It was just like, our story kind of,’ and it was just the sweetest thing so I love it.”

When she and Swift look back at their history, they don’t marvel over their fame the way you’d expect, Gomez told the podcast hosts. “It’s more so that wow, we survived it as best as we could because it’s literally all we talk about,” she said. “Not all we talk about, but when we talk about it, we’re not like, ‘Look at this prosperity.’ It’s more so like this is so cool that you get it. It’s absolutely unbelievable to come from 17 years of friendship from multiple heartbreaks and love stories and fun stories and life, we both ended up fortunately being engaged around the same time. And that was the coolest part.”

As the group discussed their admiration for Kelce, Swift’s fiancé, Gomez joined in. “Travis! I agree [we both ended up with good guys],” she said. “I’m very lucky, I’m very lucky.”

Watch the full episode below: