Released as the lead single from her first solo album, Stars Dance, Come & Get It finds Selena Gomez teaming up with 3 of today’s hottest hitmakers, including Tor Hermansen & Mikkel Eriksen (both of Stargate), and Ester Dean, with the aim of separating her from her Disney past and to establish her as a major force within the mainstream Pop scene alongside contemporaries including Rihanna, Katy and Britney.

Come & Get It possesses many of the “hit qualities” that are indicative of today’s chart-topping songs, but it also falls short in some key areas that preclude it from realizing its fullest potential.

To date Come & Get It has landed in the top 10 on 10 charts throughout the world and hit #1 on the U.S. Hot Dance Club Songs chart.

In this article we’re going to focus on one of the key pitfalls of Come & Get It – Selena Gomez’s inability to “make the song her own.”

SINGING WITH CONVICTION

You can have the most well written, finely crafted Pop song that is primed for success in a mainstream arena, but if the performing artist doesn’t connect and “buy into” what they’re singing about, neither will their audience. As a result, the song is going to fall flat and not realize its full success potential.

Unfortunately this is the case with Come & Get It. For all intents and purposes, this was a song written for Rihanna, and Selena Gomez failed to make it her own.

All of the signs are there, including:

• Come & Get It was written by Stargate and Ester Dean, who are proven Rihanna hitmakers.
• The nature of the vocal melody is perfectly suited for Rhianna’s style. Gomez sounds like she’s trying to emulate her.
• The nature of the lyrics seem a lot more applicable to Rihanna’s relationship with Chris Brown than to Gomez and Bieber.

That’s not to say that Gomez is a poor vocalist. On the contrary, she nails the vocal melody flawlessly. The core issue is that she’s not singing with any sense of passion, save for the bridge where she finally starts to “sing it like she means it.” The ultimate result is that you never buy into the fact that she really wants this guy to come back to her, which conflicts with the messaging of the lyrics.

If you’re an artist relying on outside writers to supply you with a song with great hit potential, then it is your JOB to make that song become yours, regardless if it has anything to do with your own life or not. Just going through the motions of singing an infectious melody without conviction isn’t going to do it.