Selena Gomez is all grown up with a mature new sound to prove it.
Not that she feels all that old, as the 18-year-old told our own Ryan Seacrest this morning that she doesn't feel a day over 15. Which is good news for boyfriend Justin Bieber who just became, by virtue of wacky celebrity math default, the sophisticated older man in their relationship.
So what does Selena have to say about her Biebertastic beau?
Well, not much, unfortunately.
While appearing on Seacrest's KIIS-FM radio show this morning to world premiere her new female-empowering single, "Who Says?," the topic of conversation inevitably turned to the state of her love life.
And Selena could not have played more coy. Refusing to even say Justin's name, she left it to Seacrest to mention the Biebs, and wouldn't comment on her recent Twitter acknowledgment of their relationship, in which she responded to his tweet of "I miss you" with the less clingy more coquettish, "I miss all of y'all."
"I miss everyone when I'm on tour, all my friends are gone," she slyly told Ryan. "It's nice to miss your friends and family."
Even nicer to ignore your haters, which is what Gomez is hoping to do with this tune, which starts out with the love yourself declaration, "Wouldn't want to be anyone else."
"When I heard it, I felt like my fans need this song right now, especially with Twitter and Facebook. I feel like it's really negative for me," she said. Gee, you don't say.
"Within that world, there's just such easy access to people's feelings. This song is such a great message to my fans, and it really touched me when I heard it…Basically, it's to the haters, it's to the people who try to bring you down."
Sounds good to us. As does the song. And there could be more where that came from.
While Gomez said she has the next year and a half of her life totally planned out—"at the moment I have not even a second to breathe within what I want to do"—she may find a way to squeeze in some more studio time should this new single be well-received.
The Disney star—who's about to graduate from her four-year tenure at the mouse house with the end of Wizards of Waverly Place in sight—said that a full album is "still tentative," but something she's currently working on.
And why not? Nothing like a little healthy chart competition to fire up a relationship, right?