Demi Lovato Shares How New Song ’29’ Put ‘Everything Into Perspective’
Demi Lovato unveiled their latest Holy Fvck single, “29,” on Wednesday (Aug. 17), and the song is widely believed to be about their former boyfriend Wilmer Valderrama, who was 29 years old when he first began dating then-17-year-old Lovato.
“Finally twenty-nine / Funny, just like you were at the time / Thought it was a teenage dream just a fantasy / But was it yours or was it mine? / Seventeen, twenty-nine,” Lovato, who is now 29 years old themselves, sings in the chorus. They also seem to reference 42-year-old Valderrama’s 30-year-old wife, Amanda Pacheco, when they sing, “I see you’re quite the collector / Yeah, you’re twelve years her elder / Maybe now it doesn’t matter / But I know f—ing better.”
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“When I turned 29, I remember I was on vacation and I just realized I’m 29 now, and it put things into perspective. It put everything into perspective,” Lovato told Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe in a new interview. “And I’m very careful with the way that I answer these questions because I feel like the song says it all. I don’t have to say too much, to be honest, but turning 29 was a huge eye opener for me. And then, going into treatment and having realizations led to my transformation, my release of the emotion that was put into this song.”
They added, “I would be lying if I said I didn’t have a ton of anxiety about putting out this song. I just said, ‘I have to go for this. I have to own my truth.’ And I do still walk that line very finely. I’ve learned that sometimes saying less is more. And it’s taken me to 30 years old to maybe learn that, but here I am approaching the way that I express myself differently in front of the media because it’s okay to have boundaries.”
Watch the full interview below. Holy Fvck is out on Friday (Aug. 19).
