Demi Lovato says new song 'Anyone' was a 'cry for help' before overdose
Demi Lovato‘s musical comeback includes upcoming performances on some of the biggest stages in the world, but the singer-songwriter hopes her new material shines an intimate light on the personal struggles that led her there.
In a candid interview with New Music Daily‘s Zane Lowe, the 27-year-old revealed her upcoming single “Anyone” — which she’s set to perform Sunday at the Grammys before singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl on Feb. 2 — serves as a haunting glimpse into her mindset before a July 2018 drug overdose nearly claimed her life.
“This song was written and recorded actually very shortly before everything happened. I recorded the vocals for it four days before [the overdose],” Lovato told Lowe. “The lyrics took on a totally different meaning. At the time when I was recording it, I almost listen back and hear these lyrics as a cry for help. And you kind of listen back to it and you kind of think, how did nobody listen to this song and think, ‘Let’s help this girl.'”
Lovato revealed that, leading up to the incident, she felt like she “was in denial” about her issues, which resulted in a two-week hospital stay and subsequent in-patient rehab treatment.
“I remember being in the hospital and listening to the song,” she recalled. “I just remember hearing back the songs I had just recorded and thinking, ‘If there’s ever a moment where I get to come back from this, I want to sing this song.'”
She called making music a “therapeutic” experience as she recorded “Anyone” in Montana for a prior album project in the summer of 2018, but admitted, “there’s only so much that music can do before you have to take responsibility and you have to take the initiative to get the help that you need.” Since then, her healing journey has involved meditation, therapy, and cleansing her digital palette by turning off Instagram tags and comments.
Speaking on her impending performances at the Grammys and Super Bowl, Lovato said she’s also surrounded herself with a team that has her best interests in mind, who will work to ensure she doesn’t go chasing a temporary high while coming down off the performative rush of playing at two high profile events.
“I’m going to crash, because my adrenaline is going to go all weekend,” she speculated. “Whether it goes great or not, my adrenaline is going to come crashing down… it’s definitely something that I’ve talked to my team about, like, hey, we should be more cautious, like I might crash on Monday, so let’s take precautions so I do more meditating on Monday.”
“It’s important to plan ahead so that, come Monday after the Grammys, I’m not sitting there like twiddling my thumbs like, ‘Okay, what am I doing with my life now?’ Where do I get this from? How can I beat that high?” she added.
The “Confident” singer also teased another new song that will tell more of her evolution story, while she promised several collaborations with other artists are on the way. But, one of her top priorities for the decade ahead is to start a family.
“I don’t even know if I see it with a man or a woman, but like I just know that at some point, I would love to do that this decade,” she admitted. “I would love to start doing more things that make me happy and worry less about success.”
Watch Lovato’s interview with Lowe above.
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