It starts the way it always used to: two best friends, one bedroom, a camera pointed at the bed, and a “YO YO YO.” Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato released a new vlog together on Wednesday, their first joint video in 18 years, and for the generation that grew up watching the originals on a loop, it plays like a time capsule cracking open.
The video, titled “Checking In” and posted to Gomez’s YouTube channel, recreates their 2008 vlogs beat for beat. The set is a pink teenage bedroom dressed with photos from their Princess Protection Program days. There is a notebook of fan questions to work through, dancing on the bed, and a lip-sync of “One and the Same,” the duet they recorded for that 2009 Disney Channel movie. Early on, Lovato jokes that the reason they have not vlogged in 18 years is that they lost their laptop. The whole thing closes on the line the campaign is built around: “still making each other blush.”
The vlog anchors a new campaign for Gomez’s beauty brand, Rare Beauty, called Still Making Each Other Blush. The brand announced it on Instagram with a caption longtime fans read like a password: “18 years later, Delena is back with a vlog, and yes, they’re still making each other (and us!) blush.” Delena is the nickname fans gave the pair back in their Disney Channel years. The two also recreated their Princess Protection Program poster poses, Gomez in a teal gown and tiara and Lovato in a yellow gown and crown, the two of them perched on vintage suitcases. “Once a Princess, always a Princess,” Gomez captioned the photos. “Best friends don’t just have each other’s backs. They make them blush too.”
The collaboration itself is the Delena: Soft Pinch Blush Bundle, $50 at rarebeauty.com, pairing each star’s favorite shade of the brand’s Soft Pinch Liquid Blush: Hope, a nude mauve, for Gomez, and Virtue, a beige peach, for Lovato. A Soft Pinch Blush Brush comes free with the bundle.
Both stars described the shoot the same way: like going home. “Selena and I have shared a lot of memories over the years since childhood, so being able to connect in this way, in a campaign that feels so nostalgic to both of us, is such a full-circle moment,” Lovato said in a statement. “Being on set together felt like we were back in our old bedrooms making YouTube videos and playing with makeup.” Gomez added, “The experiences I’ve shared with Demi are truly unique. Coming together for this campaign was a beautiful reminder of that history and a chance to celebrate who we are today. One and the same… always.”
The project grew out of a real-life reconnection. Gomez attended opening night of Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep Tour in Orlando in April, the two reconnected backstage, and the campaign followed. Lovato told ELLE the friendship, which began when both were seven years old on Barney & Friends, has naturally moved in chapters: “There have been different chapters throughout our lives, and naturally, friends are in each other’s lives heavily at times, and then sometimes you’re not in constant communication. But Selena is someone that I’ve always loved and adored. It’s really great to be in a place today where we can collaborate on things, but also just hang out and spend time together.” She also admitted she recently rewatched the old vlogs with her husband, Jordan “Jutes” Lutes, and could not sit through a whole one for embarrassment. “But they were iconic,” she said.
The two posted their first vlog together on January 29, 2008, in the middle of the runs that made them famous, Gomez leading Wizards of Waverly Place and Lovato headlining Camp Rock and Sonny With a Chance. A year later, Princess Protection Program made them a fixture of a million childhoods. Fans have spent the days since cutting the new footage against the old, side by side, and the comments read like a reunion of their own. “I’m literally sobbing, this is my whole childhood,” one fan wrote. Another put it simply: “the world has healed a little today.”