Benny Blanco Reveals What Helped Him Win Over Selena Gomez: ‘I Didn’t Use, Like, Black Magic’

For Benny Blanco, the secret to winning over Selena Gomez was honestly pretty simple: Be nice.

“I didn’t use, like, black magic or anything,” Blanco joked during a conversation on TODAY Sunday (Sept. 13), during which he promoted his upcoming book, F–k Failure. “I just was nice. It’s like understanding your partner and being able to talk about things, and have an open dialogue. Yeah, we’re in a really good spot and I’m very fortunate. And I think, again, not being a [censored] and being nice to people put her in my orbit.”

The hitmaker, producer and 12-time Grammy nominee has plenty of more complicated stories to tell about his career, from hustling his way into New York studios as a teenager to helping artists including Rihanna, Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber turn songs into global hits. When it came to Gomez, the woman who would eventually become his spouse and whom he called “the most beautiful wife in the world,” Blanco insists the formula was less mysterious than people realize.

It also helped that their first date was apparently a surprise to Blanco.

The pair had already been working together, and a dinner came shortly after. Blanco didn’t realize it was a date until he was already sitting across from Gomez.

“I had no idea,” he recalled. “And then, like, I’m on the date and now I’m like, ‘Is this a date?’ And she’s just like, ‘Yeah, like, what do you mean? I wore this out…'”

Their relationship eventually led to marriage, with Blanco and Gomez approaching their first wedding anniversary. But their story is just one of many dreams Blanco has seen come to fruition since his aspiring teenage rapper days.

Blanco started making music before he could even read. As a teen in Virginia, he began rapping, putting his beats online and sending his work to producers and record labels. His persistence finally landed him in rooms with established producers, where he picked up early credits working on music for artists including Britney Spears, Kesha and Katy Perry.

That same persistence, Blanco says, remains one of the biggest reasons he is still here.

“If you keep going, the people are going to fall off,” he explained. “So then your competition is getting shorter and shorter.”

It’s an appropriately Blanco philosophy for someone whose career has been built around refusing to take “no” too seriously. And despite the glossy success that followed — the hits, the Grammy nods, the superstar collaborators and now name recognition — Blanco doesn’t see his career as a straight line upward.

His new book is built around failure, which Blanco considers one of the most useful parts of his journey as a hitmaker. Even now, he said, things don’t always work.

“I finished a mix. They didn’t like it. They wanted to redo something,” Blanco recalls of a recent project. “And what am I going to do? Cry about it?”

Instead, Blanco wants readers to learn from the mistakes he has already made so they don’t have to repeat all of them themselves.

When asked what artists such as Rihanna and Sheeran might say is the secret to working with him, Blanco didn’t point to a singular production trick, songwriting technique or a specific piece of gear. Instead, he said his biggest strength is creating an environment where people feel comfortable enough to make something.

“I create an environment that feels conducive to creating,” he said.

For Blanco, knowing that a song is going to connect isn’t something that can be outright explained or predicted in advance. Sometimes, you just feel it. He compared the sensation to being startled or suddenly realizing you’re about to kiss someone — that instance when your body reacts before your brain has caught up.

“It’s like that take-your-breath away feeling,” he said.

Though Blanco has mastered his own philosophy along the years, he has some advice from Ed Sheeran that has additionally served him well: “Don’t give people the opportunity to not want to help you.”

In other words, if someone asks you to do something that seems small, just do it. Being easy to work with can matter just as much as being talented. Blanco has tried to apply that principle to both his professional and personal life, and if his marriage is any indication, he thinks it works there, too.

“What can people learn from you and Selena in this book?” Blanco was asked.