Songfacts®:

• "Sunset Blvd" is a love song that's giddy, starry-eyed, and just a little risqué. It takes its name from the legendary Los Angeles thoroughfare where Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco had their first date, a detail that transforms the track into something of a personal keepsake, like a romantic scrapbook set to a glossy synth-pop soundtrack.
  
  "This song felt like such a moment in time where you're just fully lost in someone and you're past that point and you're like, 'OK, I'm not scared anymore. F- it, I'm just going to dive into this. Let myself fall into a new world," Blanco explained in a behind-the-scenes film of the music video.
  
  "I remember us in real life, we were driving in a convertible," he continued. "I felt like a teenager again and our hair's blowing in the wind. I made a playlist for the ride, and we were dancing and singing. Just to see her face and laugh and smile. I didn't even know we were on a date. I thought we were just hanging out as friends."
• Gomez spends much of the song reminiscing about that night, sprinkling in a few coy innuendos and declarations of devotion, but mostly reveling in the pure, head-over-heels rush of new love. She's aware, of course, that her relationship will be headline fodder, and she acknowledges as much in the chorus:
  
  With open arms
  Holding you naked, middle of Sunset Boulevard
  Making you famous, everyone's watching
  Bare skin, concrete
  They're calling the police
  Open arms
  
  It's all quite different from the Sunset Boulevard of 1950 Hollywood lore, which chronicles the tragic unraveling of an aging silent film star. Here, we have a young actress and singer at the peak of her career finding her fairytale ending - albeit one where the paparazzi are lurking behind every shrub.
• Gomez and Blanco wrote the song with Justin Tranter, Cashmere Cat, Michael Pollack, Amanda Ibanez and Jeremy Malvin.
  
  Justin Tranter has collaborated extensively with Selena Gomez. He co-wrote several of her hits, including "Good For You," "Hands To Myself," and "Bad Liar" from her album Revival. Tranter also worked with Benny Blanco on Julia Michaels' song "Issues" in 2017.
  
  Magnus Høiberg (Cashmere Cat) produced Gomez' 2023 single "Single Soon" alongside Blanco.
  
  Michael Pollack has written songs for Selena Gomez before, including "My Mind & Me" in 2022 and "Love On"in 2024.
  
  Amanda Ibanez, also known as Kiddo A.I., is a singer, topliner, and multi-instrumentalist from Miami. She co-wrote the remix of Rema's "Calm Down" with Selena Gomez, where she was tasked with writing a verse for Gomez.
  
  Jeremy Malvin is a musician and producer from Pittsburgh known for his project Chrome Sparks.
  
  Blanco also took the reins on production, along with Malvin and Bart Schoudel.
  
  Ibanez told Billboard "Sunset Blvd." came out of nowhere. "Benny or Michael Pollack was on the keys, and we all just started singing this hook melody," she recalled. "I don't remember who said 'Sunset Blvd,' but it just made so much sense because then Benny and Selena were like, 'Wait, that's where we had our first date."
  
  The song flowed so naturally. "It was great to be able to help them say what they wanted to say.," Kiddo added. "We wrote it in, I think, an hour. It basically wrote itself."
• Canadian photographer and fashion designer Petra Collins directed the video. It has a retro aesthetic with Gomez performing in a lingerie-clad scene, daydreaming about Blanco. Gomez' hair and makeup paid homage to Francis Ford Coppola's 1982 film One from the Heart. Collins previously shot the video for Gomez's 2017 song "Fetish."