Benny Blanco Found Love and Wants the Same for You: 'Don't Settle"
Benny Blanco is so ready to be a wife guy. So much so that when I approach his Beverly Hills abode—a Tuscan-style home where he's lived the past six years solo, cushioned by hedges and hot pink bougainvillea flowers—the award-winning songwriter-producer greets me after his workout wearing floral gym shorts, plus a tie-dye T-shirt bearing a portrait of himself and his pop star fiancée, Selena Gomez, printed across the chest.
'It was a gift from my friend Patrick,' says Blanco, 37. 'I don't know what's wrong with me.'Our interview takes place inside his personal movie theater, where the couch and walls are equally swathed in plush red velvet upholstery. A nearby candy bar is stocked with M&M'S, Skittles, and a myriad of other sweet treats. Yet Blanco will soon frequent his meticulously curated home much less; just after announcing their engagement in December 2024, he and Gomez purchased a Spanish-style estate in the Hills, where he'll have an abundance of space to work his magic in—'magic' as in interior decorating.'I love making a house my own,' he says. 'I'm not in there with the staple gun, but I'm in there with tchotchkes and a lot of creativity and heart. I hate it when you go into a person's house and you're like, 'Ooh, it feels like nobody lives here!' I don't want to be scared to sit down on shit.'
In March, Blanco and Gomez released their joint album, I Said I Love You First, a collection of saccharine pop vignettes devised in a guest room in Blanco's home and primarily sung by Gomez in her signature sad-girl dulcet tones. The couple got additional help from such friends as Charli XCX in the brattified hyper-pop track 'Bluest Flame,' Gracie Abrams in the pop-punk fizz of 'Call Me When You Breakup,' and María Zardoya (of The Marías) in 'Ojos Tristes,' which interpolates a 1981 ballad by the enigmatic Spanish chanteuse, Jeanette.
The project came about organically, says Blanco, after many romantic moments spent sharing records. The two have bonded over classics by Aretha Franklin—'One Step Ahead' is the couple's favorite—and Taylor Swift, who happens to be one of Gomez's longtime pals.'In the car, we'll have our little Swiftie moment,' he says. 'She's a true Swiftie, through and through. Then she got me on the train, and now I'm a full Swiftie. I don't listen to a ton of contemporary music anyways, but Selena would play me the deep cuts. And I was like, 'Damn… Taylor's pen is so fire!'I Said I Love You First—and its deluxe edition released on May 2nd, …And You Said It Back—wasn't Blanco's first collaboration with Gomez. The two first melded minds in the studio while making Gomez's 2015 album, Revival, which yielded two of her biggest hits to date: 'Same Old Love' and 'Kill Em With Kindness.'
'I met Selena when she was 16,' Blanco says, explaining her mom connected them professionally as she prepared to sign a record deal. 'We didn't work together until many years later. They say you've probably already met the person that you're gonna spend the rest of your life with… I never believed that shit until it happened to me.''And now I get to kiss her,' he adds. 'It's like my own little fairytale I concocted.'
He won't say as much, but his songs with Gomez are just a handful of highlights in Blanco's illustrious career. He founded his boutique labels under Interscope (Mad Love and Friends Keep Secrets) and boasts credits on some of the biggest hits of the past 20 years, including Kesha's 'TiK ToK,' Katy Perry's 'Teenage Dream,' and Maroon 5's 'Moves Like Jagger.' Blanco was just 20 years old when he was signed as a producer to Kasz Money Productions, which is how he ended up working on the first major hit in his repertoire: Britney Spears's 2008 classic, 'Circus.'
'I was like, 'Mom, I'm going in the studio with Britney Spears,'' Blanco recalls. 'She was like, 'No, you're not.' And I was like, 'I swear, I am!' That's how it was. Even when my songs got big, my mom was like, 'Yeah, but what's your backup plan?''
For all his resulting fame and fortune, Blanco coasts through our conversation with an unpretentious, down-to-earth cool. He was born Benjamin Joseph Levin in Grand Prairie, Texas—the exact same birthplace as his betrothed—and was raised between Virginia and Maryland. He first developed an affinity for pop when he was 5 years old, citing his mother's copy of the 1992 Prince album, Love Symbol, which Blanco remembers as 'his 'Sexy M.F.' era.'
'We used to have one of those portable CD players that you had to plug into the wall, so I would drag that around everywhere and just get naked and dance,' Blanco recalls. 'My first two [records] I ever bought were [singles]: Nas, 'The World Is Yours,' and All-4-One's 'I Swear.' That's what started it all.'
Blanco attended public school in Virginia, where he made friends of various nationalities and walks of life—and he studied their music, too. Under the influence of DMV-area legends like Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and Pharrell Williams, Blanco experimented on beats with his buddies using the Korg Triton, the holy grail of the Virginia sound, and aughts-era production software like Fruity Loops and Sound Forge. Thanks to the burgeoning club music scene in neighboring Baltimore and the bloghaus sound bubbling up in New York City, Blanco began building his own effervescent and quirky approach to pop by collaborating with rapper Spank Rock, as well as the late turntablist Disco D.
College wasn't on the agenda for Blanco, who skipped class in high school to play at dance parties in Brooklyn. But he didn't even possess a laptop, a turntable, or a hard drive—just a cumbersome iMac G5 monitor he drove up from Virginia and lugged sheepishly from club to club. After his shows, Blanco and his friends 'would sleep in the train station, a park, or even the McDonald's in Times Square.'
As for his parents, he adds, 'They didn't really know. Are you kidding me? My mom would have lost her mind if she knew I was sleeping on a park bench!'
Blanco considers his mother to be his biggest role model. In the wake of her divorce from Blanco's father, she equipped her son with ample relationship advice. 'My mom always took the time to explain how a female mind works because she was going through so many dating traumas when I was growing up,' he explains, crediting her love for painting and music as a source of his own creativity, joy, and tenderness. 'I've had some tough times, but I've always been like a very happy person. I just wake up stoked every day.'
His resulting emotional intelligence became evident during a recent appearance on celebrity life coach Jay Shetty's 'On Purpose' podcast. Blanco left audiences positively floored by the ease with which he took responsibility for his role in maintaining relational harmony: 'I think people's biggest problem, especially men, is we don't listen all the time... A woman will tell you exactly what she needs.'
'I'm 37 years old,' says Blanco. 'I hope I know how to treat a woman by now! Like, you should always ask a woman what they wanna do. Don't always talk about yourself. Then you put it into practice… and you fuck up so much, oh my God. You know how many frogs I had to kiss to get to Selena?'I can't help but wrinkle my nose at the comparison. 'They were beautiful frogs!' Blanco assures me, 'And like, guys are so bad... I know so many awesome women who are single. And it's like, how are they single? They're 10 out of 10! But there are so many fuckboys. Don't settle, ladies. Not for some dude that uses more hair gel than you do.'
It begs my next question: Did you have any men in your life who helped you develop emotional competency? To that, he smiles and shakes his head. 'Nah,' he says. 'But some things [I] learn from friends of mine. I see them do something stupid, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'll never do that in a relationship.' Then sometimes you see your friend do something rad, and you're like, 'Ooh, I'm taking that little idea.' You stop learning when you stop listening.'
There are no guarantees of a Benny and Selena On the Run world tour as of yet. Besides planning their upcoming wedding, Gomez has been in New York shooting the fifth season of Only Murders in the Building, the Emmy-winning mystery comedy series with Martin Short and Steve Martin. In the meantime, Blanco dreams of starting a family with Gomez someday. 'I love kids; I love being an uncle,' he intimates. 'I want to be a dad, though, God willing. I'm just dreaming and praying every day.'
And he hopes their latest record, with all the love and goodwill baked into it, will resonate with young men and women looking for their other halves—musical and otherwise. 'These are the years of strong women, and to me, it's so important that powerful women are being heard and loved and respected,' Blanco says. 'I can't wait to see what it does for this next generation of music. And for women in general, not having to take shit from dumb men… And not having to sing as much about suffering, I guess!'Photographer
Leeor WildStylist
Chloe BadawyGrooming
Giuliana BartolettiSet Stylist
Amy Jo DiazSpecial Thanks
PolaroidRead the original article on InStyle
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