TRACK REVIEW:
Demi Lovato
The track, Dancing with the Devil, is available from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAg69LaLlS0
GENRES:
Pop/Pop-Rock/R&B
ORIGIN:
New Mexico, U.S.A.
The album, Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over, is available via:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7LEb5SYZrXiB8NDj2oYvOd?si=4ifzKAtUQKaihCytK6wx0Q
RELEASE DATE:
2nd April, 2021
LABEL:
Island
PRODUCERS:
Dayyon Alexander/Mitch Allan/Marcus Andersson/Lauren Aquilina/Tommy Brown/Eren Cannata/Philip ‘Phil the Keys’ Cornish/Warren ‘Oak’ Felder/Courageous Xavier Herrera/Jussifer/Matthew Koma/Pop & Oak/Ryan ‘Rykeyz’ Williamson
TRACKLISTING:
Anyone
Dancing with the Devil
ICU (Madison's Lullabye)
Intro
The Art of Starting Over
Lonely People
The Way You Don't Look at Me
Melon Cake
Met Him Last Night (ft. Ariana Grande)
What Other People Say (with Sam Fischer)
Carefully
The Kind of Lover I Am
Easy (with Noah Cyrus)
15 Minutes
My Girlfriends Are My Boyfriend (ft. Saweetie)
California Sober
Mad World
Butterfly
Good Place
__________
WHAT I love about reviewing…
bigger names is that one can include so much detail and you get these brilliant interviews and photos. Nothing against newer acts, but there is something really interesting diving into a mainstream artists who has this history and makes for very compelling reading. Today, I am reviewing one of modern music’s biggest stars: the incomparable Demi Lovato. She is someone I have been following for a long time. I really liked her 2017 album, Tell Me You Like Me, but I think she has hit a new peak with her new album, Dancing with the Devil ... the Art of Starting Over. It is a magnificent album that I would urge people to listen to. There is that blend of raw honesty and personal revelation which, at times, can really knock you back. One also experiences plenty of positivity and hopefulness. It is a really rewarding album with some of Lovato’s best material on it. I will come to the title track (of sorts), Dancing with the Devil, soon. Before then, I want to look back and bring in some sides of Lovato that I think warrant discussion. In terms of interviews, I am borrowing from those conducted fairly recently. Lovato has done quite a bit of promotion for her new album and, in the course of doing so, we have discovered a lot regarding her early work and a rather bleak period for her. I want to source from The Sunday Times’ interview of last month. We learn about Lovato’s early albums and her rise to fame. There was this moment when a dam broke; there were signs of trouble that would bloom and exist for years:
“When Camp Rock catapulted Lovato into an A-list celebrity whirlwind, the teen released two hit solo albums in quick succession, landed more lead parts, dated a pop star and went on an international tour. In public she was the all-American Disney princess with the voice of an angel. Off stage she was binge-eating, vomiting, taking drugs, drinking heavily and cutting herself.
Fans were stunned when the 18-year-old checked herself into rehab after punching a female backing dancer in the face on their tour plane in Colombia. The facility treated Lovato for cocaine addiction, depression, bipolar disorder, self-harm and bulimia. Ten months after entering rehab, in 2011, she released her third solo album, Unbroken, followed by a 2012 MTV documentary, Stay Strong, about her recovery. A bestselling book, Staying Strong, observed the same conventional narrative arc of redemption and sobriety, sugared with inspirational mantras and meditation tips”.
It is always worrying when you have this very young artist who is put into the spotlight. Having that sort of pressure and expectation on your shoulders can be very daunting and damaging. For Demi Lovato, one wonders how much of her teen years were normal; where she was allowed some form of freedom. I was reading an interview from The New York Times where Lovato spoke very openly about her teen years and facing unhappiness:
“Looking back at her days of teen stardom through the lens of an adult, Lovato has compassion. “In hindsight, I don’t blame my 17-year-old self for being so miserable,” she said. “When I’m angry, it means that I’m actually hurting,” she added. “Young women in the industry who get labeled with ‘difficult to work with’ — it’s like, hey, maybe just for a second, consider that it’s not that I’m a bad person. It’s just that nobody’s listening to me and I’m hungry, and I’m tired and overworked and doing the best I can for an unmedicated 17-year-old.”
Exposing her imperfections to the world did little to alleviate internal pressures, though. Behind the scenes, Lovato pushed herself to be the idealized version of a successful pop star as her career progressed. Her first two albums from 2008 and 2009 were filled with spunky pop-punk in the mode of Ashlee Simpson and Avril Lavigne. Her third LP, “Unbroken,” which included the hit ballad “Skyscraper” and the irresistible “Give Your Heart a Break,” was a creative leap, adding more R&B influences and serious subjects.
She said she avoids revisiting her subsequent two albums, “Demi” (2013) and “Confident” (2015). “I don’t know if it’s because it reminds me of the people that were in my life during those times or if it just doesn’t feel that authentic to myself,” she said. “I had really believed in myself after putting ‘Skyscraper’ out, for the Grammys. I was like, I might have a shot now! And then I put out another album — nothing.”
Discouraged by the reaction, she recalibrated. “So I dove into, all right, what is the formula for a pop star that’s top of the charts?” She counted off the criteria on her right hand: “She shows her skin, she’s a lot fitter, and you know, she wears leotards onstage. So I played that role for a minute. And that didn’t ulfil me at all.”
Fired up, she continued: “It’s weird to think that I had more sense of identity as a 15, 16-year-old than I did as a 23-year-old”.
I read that interview and segments where Lovato discussed that quest for perfection and chasing the ideal of a Pop artist. It makes for worrying reading that calls into question how young artists in the industry are handled and moulded – especially, this is true and glaringly explicit for young women. It makes me wonder whether those experiences during her teen years led to addiction and depression that almost cost Lovato her life.
PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave
I want to bring in some interviews that look back at a harrowing time for Lovato. It makes for quite upsetting and triggering reading so, if you have been in a situation similar to Lovato (regarding a drugs overdose and attempted suicide), then it might be worth skipping forward. Going back to that interview with The New York Times, we learn about an horrific event that was a turning point for the Pop superstar:
“Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her. It took about two months to recover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years’ worth of sleep, playing board games or taking a single lap around the hospital floor for exercise. Blind spots made it nearly impossible to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through her peripheral vision and typed using voice notes.
“It was interesting how fast I adapted,” she said in a recent interview. “I didn’t leave myself time to really feel sad about it. I just was like, how do I fix it?”
Lovato, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable — she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time. She got her start on kids’ TV and made the tricky leap to adult stardom, releasing six albums (two platinum, four gold), serving as a judge on “The X Factor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will & Grace” and amassing 100 million Instagram followers — all while managing an eating disorder since she was a child, drug addiction that started in her teens, coming out as queer and the constant pressure of being an exceptionally famous person”.
That sense of strength and resilience is seen in spades in her new documentary, Dancing with the Devil. There have been a few documentaries from young women in music like Britney Spears and Lovato, where we learn more about darker times and a music machine which can be quite cruel and damaging. Rather than castigate the industry and fire a warning for future stars, Lovato explores more troubled times and her route to recovery. You can seek out the documentary on YouTube and get a better sense of a very strong and inspiring woman. If you are not familiar with Dancing with the Devil, then this Billboard interview provides some context:
“Now, the singer is opening up more than ever, sharing intimate details of her hospitalization and the months of strength since then in her YouTube Originals documentary series, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, premiering March 23. To tell a story as heart-wrenching and ultimately inspiring as hers, Lovato called on her friend and director Michael D. Ratner.
"I was humbled to be able to give her a platform to tell her story," Ratner tells Billboard of the opportunity to work with Lovato on the four-part series, which first debuted at SXSW on Tuesday (March 16). "My responsibility is to give her the space to tell as much of her story and experience as she wants to tell. Ultimately, I found her opening up more and more as the process went on, and the trust was earned. It was in some of those later sit-downs where some of the heavier traumas were unveiled. I think that sometimes I would find those things out before we were rolling, and sometimes I think she actually made the decision to share that stuff because she did feel so comfortable while she was speaking and in the environment we put her in”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
I am going to stick with the documentary, as it feeds into the album. The two, in a sense, are companion pieces. I am very moved and impressed that artists such as Demi Lovato can be so revealing and strong. I can only imagine how harrowing and upsetting it must be to recount such a traumatic time! One almost worries that floodgates could open and it could lead to depression and anxiety. I think, more than anything, it allows Lovato to tell her story and act as a compassionate shoulder and guide to any other artist (or person) who is in a similar position. Coming back to the interview from The New York Times. They look at how Pop documentaries can be self-serving and redacted. In the case of Dancing with the Devil, Lovato is brutally open and shows its scars:
“She recounts her relapse and overdose unblinkingly in the documentary “Dancing With the Devil,” which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival this week and will be released on YouTube in four episodes starting March 23. A song with the same name, a brassy, haunting showcase for Lovato’s powerhouse voice, anchors a new album, “Dancing With the Devil … The Art of Starting Over,” due April 2.
Documentaries from pop stars about themselves have become a cottage industry, but most feel like sanitized marketing tools and grasp for friction, like the stress of fame or loneliness. Lovato’s film, which follows “Simply Complicated” in 2017, is all tension — 90-plus minutes of mostly interviews directed by Michael D. Ratner — and doesn’t gloss over the ugliest realities. She reveals excruciating details about a history of sexual assault, self-harm and family trauma, one troubling scenario colliding into another like dominoes. The film and album are part of a comeback attempt that puts a core part of the Demi Lovato proposition to the test: How honest can she really be?
PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Pop stardom is a high-wire act on the continuum between fantasy and reality, spectacle and authenticity, escaping and relating. There are the otherworldly untouchables who appear to hover tantalizingly out of reach (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga), and the seemingly fully knowables who feel just an arm’s length away (Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus). A lot depends on how much a musician reveals to her audience. And Lovato has always been a sharer.
“Dancing With the Devil” is filled with fresh admissions that betray previous obfuscations. Her overdose came after six years of sobriety, during which Lovato felt increasingly hemmed in by the measures her longtime managers took to help her stay on track. It caused three strokes, a heart attack and organ failure. She had pneumonia from asphyxiating on her vomit; she suffered brain damage from the strokes, and has lasting vision problems. (She can no longer drive and described the lingering effects as resembling sunspots.) The drug dealer who brought her heroin that night sexually assaulted her, then left her close to death”.
AMY WINEHOUSE WAS found dead of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011. That same date seven years later, Lovato began the night of partying that ended in the I.C.U. “Amy,” the 2015 documentary about the British musician, played at Lovato’s rehab facility. She couldn’t bring herself to watch it.
“I did definitely look up to her and I valued her vulnerability and transparency with her audience because it bred that connection that I felt to her,” she said. “And that’s ultimately what my fans feel with me”.
I am going to move on in a second. I feel something as important and interlinked with the Dancing with the Devil…The Art of Starting Over warrants respectful and proper focus. I am also going to bring in an interview where we learn about relapse that, as I highlighted before, could be triggering to some people. I wanted to source some of the more upsetting details from interviews as it shows that Lovato has come through such a storm - and we learn more about a remarkable artist.
PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR
In a very detailed and explorative interview with PAPER recently, Lovato says (in the documentary) how she lives a healthily life. She is prioritising her health and stability over stardom:
“One such disclosure is the admission that she is no longer wholly sober — she drinks in moderation, and smokes some marijuana. It's a lifestyle choice that does not align with most treatment programs for addiction (to quote Sir Elton John, an addict in recovery and one of Dancing With the Devil's many colorful talking heads: "Moderation doesn't work.")
Lovato has lived this way for the past two years. The documentary takes great care to explain that this is her individual choice made under the supervision of doctors, and that it can't and won't work for everyone.
Control — both in excess and as a lack — is a persistent theme across Dancing With the Devil's four episodes. Lovato recounts pushing back against edicts that she get stone-cold sober at 19 and live on a permanent diet.
"In my career, it benefits me to be a perfectionist," she says. "In my personal life, it definitely doesn't. Having been in recovery from eating disorders, body image and perfectionism are not friends in my eyes, and so it's been difficult to balance. But for the most part it's just something that you have to walk through with as much grace as possible.
Is it safe to say that the documentary partly exists in order to ensure that Lovato can continue to make music? The maintenance of stardom at Lovato's level is tricky. Fans want a personal story to latch onto, and so the star gives and gives. But with transparency comes increased scrutiny on already bruised spots, making fame like a snake eating its own tail. But she doesn't see it that way.
"I think less about the future and music and more about living my truth," she says. "If every decision I made was based off of my future. I'd just be future tripping the entire time. I wouldn't be living in the present moment at all." And that's where she likes to be”.
I want to go back to 2018 and the interview with The Sunday Times. We discover how she relapsed and there was this dangerous moment. There is a revelation regarding her heroin use that opened my eyes and made me wonder whether Lovato has truly recovered and is out of the woods:
“When she took her first drink, in April 2018, did she tell herself she could relapse without spiralling out of control again? “I think at that point I just didn’t care.”
The overdose three months later was reported in breathless detail by the world’s media. The one horrifying fact no one knew, until now, is that the dealer who sold her the lethal cocktail of drugs did not leave after delivering them to her home. He stayed. And when she was incapacitated and barely conscious, he raped her.
I was still reeling from this revelation in the documentary when Lovato’s next bombshell floored me. “I wish I could say the last night I ever touched heroin was the night of my overdose,” she tells the camera. “But it wasn’t.” Just weeks later she called the same dealer and invited him over. “I wanted to rewrite his choice of violating me. I wanted it now to be my choice. I said, ‘No, I’m going to f*** you.’ That was my way of taking the power back.” A decade earlier, she adds, she had done the same thing with the first man who raped her. “And it didn’t fix anything. All it did was make me feel worse”.
To risk alienating public sympathy with such an explosive disclosure takes breathtaking commitment to candour. Sexual assault experts report that Lovato’s response is actually not uncommon, but it’s seldom disclosed by victims for fear of undermining their own credibility. To the general public, the psychological complexity of sexual assault can be highly confusing. To help people understand why victims’ behaviour doesn’t always conform to their expectations, can Lovato explain why she met up with her rapists again?
“I use the term ‘trauma re-enactment’. And there’s a sense of agency that I guess I felt when I was the one to call them back and kind of correct the situation, in my eyes. Because if I was the one in control, then I was fixing it. Which obviously isn’t the case. Like, what happened still happened. And this is not going to make it any better.”
The documentary’s final revelation is scarcely any less brave — so much so that I ask if she felt tempted not to disclose it? She shakes her head. “It was actually one of the main things I wanted to talk about.” For the past two years Lovato has been using cannabis and drinking alcohol. “And I need to talk about this, and share my truth, because I’ve seen how moderation management works for me”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave
I guess we will have to see how things go for Lovato. Whilst she is healthier than she was a few years ago, one can never predict addiction and know whether it will resurface. I want to discuss, briefly, Lovato’s new look and transformation. This is not so that I can focus on something shallow and tabloid-esque. Instead, Lovato seems like she is happier and more secure in her skin as a woman in her twenties than she was in her teens (or even a few years back). The interview with The Sunday Times discusses Lovato now and how she felt about her body when she was younger:
“She used to speak to the media in the saccharine register of red-carpet platitudes, but when we meet over Zoom I barely recognise her. Her Hollywood mane has been cropped into a gamine pixie cut, her nose is pierced, and she’s wearing clear-framed glasses so big they look like laboratory goggles. Celebrities in recovery often become so accustomed to sharing their addiction stories with total strangers that they can sound strangely affectless, reeling off their darkest secrets with the detachment of a talking clock. Lovato, by contrast, sounds fully emotionally engaged.
Talking from her bed in LA, a downy cloud of taupe linen, she listens closely, often pausing to consider her words, but doesn’t come across as cagey, just compellingly thoughtful. The 28-year-old appears so at ease in her own skin, no one looking would ever guess how much she used to hate her own body.
She says she was two years old when she began to feel fat. “I remember being in pull-ups, still potty training, and running my hand over my stomach. That was the beginning of the rest of my life with body image issues. It never went away in my whole childhood. I always felt like I was larger than other kids”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe for PAPER
I shall get to my review soon but, as I am prone to do in interviews, I want to give a fuller impression of an artist, rather than deliver a few lines about a song. It might seem strange, but there are segments of interviews (usually near the start) where we get a sense of context about where Lovato is speaking from and how she appears. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the impression of Lovato we have is of someone who seems a lot more radiant and relaxed. That said, there are reminders of the past and the fact that she came very close to dying:
“When EW talks with Lovato in early March, she's curled up with a laptop at her Los Angeles home, barefaced and beaming on a Friday afternoon before one of her precious weekends off. She never asks to go off the record, but she does interject several times with concerns she's either rambling or has given a canned answer, a habit she says reminds her too much of how she used to be.
She laughs a lot. Sometimes her eyes well up with tears, and then she laughs again. She seems easy in her skin, radiant with self-awareness — and that alone is a stark reminder of how truly close she came to dying. Most young stars with such heavy hearts don't survive to tell their story, especially in music: Justin Townes Earle, Juice WRLD, and Mac Miller all died in the last few years from some combination of fentanyl, cocaine, and oxycodone in their bodies. The ones who live to see their battles through in full public view usually pay dearly for the privilege (see: Framing Britney Spears)”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR
Before investigating the new album and its sound, I want to spend a moment on the subject of sexuality. In interviews, Lovato has talked about how she considers herself to be a queer artist. She has also revealed how she identifies as being pansexual. In relation to her identification as being queer, we learn more from the interview from The New York Times:
“She did, but not until two years later, before she went on a date with a woman and presumed photos would end up online. “I put a lot of negative expectations on that conversation that I wish I hadn’t,” Lovato said, resting her chin on her hand embellished with a lion head tattoo. “Growing up in the South, growing up as Christian, I was scared to know how she’d react.” (Her mother’s response? “I just want you to be happy.”)
Lovato hadn’t kept her queerness a secret, but she didn’t make many public pronouncements about it until her 2017 documentary, when she said she was on a dating app for both men and women. In March, she started seeing a male actor, and the relationship progressed quickly in quarantine, resulting in a July engagement. But in September — a month after her birthday — Lovato called it off.
“I feel like I dodged a bullet because I wouldn’t have been living my truth for the rest of my life had I confined myself into that box of heteronormativity and monogamy,” she said, her voice sparking with energy. “And it took getting that close to shake me up and be like, wow, you really got to live your life for who you really are”.
Coming back to that PAPER interview, Lovato discussed her sexuality and relationship status. It seems if, in the past, there was ambiguity and a sense of ambivalence, she is a lot more open and comfortable discussing her queerness and embracing it now:
“Going back over the past year, I thought my life was going to turn out a lot differently than it has,” Lovato says over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles, hair now styled into a black pixie. “At one point I was engaged to a man, and now I’m very much not. And so I just wanted to allow myself the freedom to match my outside to what I feel like on the inside, and that’s what I’ve done.”
After a public engagement (and break up) to a cis male actor last year, Lovato is eager to embrace her queerness. “The queer label is fine because to me it’s just this blanket statement of being different,” she says. “That’s what I can commit to. I feel like I’m too fluid to commit to a label”.
That sense of coming to terms with her sexuality is explored in the Entertainment Weekly interview. Not that there is stigma attached (though there might be), but being a huge artist is very different to being a ‘normal’ person. Maybe there was a sense of hesitation regarding discussing her sexuality - through a fear it could alter her public image and alienate some fans:
“Lovato hasn't always been forthcoming in talking about her sexuality, which in the past earned her some ire from other LGBTQ artists and the media, especially after shooting the video for 2014's "Really Don't Care" on a float during Los Angeles' Pride parade. Even when her bouncy bi-curious "Cool for the Summer" was released in 2015, "I never said anything," Lovato admits. "Gender norms and sexuality norms aside, I kind of felt a prisoner to my entire career and childhood growing up in the South as a Christian."
She vaguely affirmed that she wasn't exclusively into men, though publicly she was seen only with boyfriends. In her 2017 doc, Simply Complicated, she mentions searching for men and women on the dating app Raya, but the topic of her sexuality has often felt more like an uncomfortable standoff with the community rather than a powerful, proud declaration”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times
In an article on the TODAY website, they talk about an interview Lovato conducted with Joe Rogan. During it, she clarified the position regarding her sexuality and that she identifies as pansexual:
“Demi Lovato is opening up about her sexuality in a new interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.
The 28-year-old "Anyone" singer described herself as pansexual, explaining that she is attracted to both men and women and "anything" in between. "I’m so fluid now, and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was, like, super closeted off," she said.
"You mean sexually fluid?" asked Rogan. "You like girls? You like boys?"
"Yeah, anything, really" Lovato responded.
"What do they call that? Like pansexual or something like that?" Rogan asked.
"Yeah, pansexual," replied the singer, who called off her engagement to actor Max Ehrich last year.
Lovato, who stars in the new YouTube Originals docuseries "Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil," told Rogan that she first learned she was attracted to women as a child when she saw Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar kiss in the 1999 teen romantic drama "Cruel Intentions." Unfortunately, the sexual awakening the scene aroused in her caused her to feel ashamed.
“I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that’s very frowned upon,” she recalled. “Any attraction that I ever had toward a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling”.
I am going to get down to reviewing soon. There are a few more things I want to tackle. Tying in with Lovato’s sexuality and her sense of self-discovery and acceptance, there is a darker side of the music industry where artists are sexualised and exploited. Lovato has accepted herself and has a sense of control that wasn’t always there. Returning to the interview from The New York Times and she discussed how she was shaped and moulded into someone she was not truly happy with:
“Lovato’s understanding of her identity, as well as the status of her physical and mental health, has been complicated by the matrix of pop stardom. But a new generation of artists, including Billie Eilish, is pushing back against long-held expectations. “I think it was when Billie started wearing the baggy clothes, that was the first time I was like, I don’t have to be the super-sexy sexualized pop star,” Lovato said. “And it also never felt that comfortable to me. Like it’s not the most natural thing to me to go onstage in a leotard.”
That perspective shift led to a cascade of questions: “If I’m not the sexualized pop star with a big voice, then what am I?” Lovato asked herself. “I feel like ever since that awakening, I embraced my independence. I embraced the balance of both masculine and feminine parts of me. And I do feel in control more so than I’ve ever felt in my life”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Amanda Charchian for GLAMOUR
I shall bring in the new album, Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. There is a sense that the documentary and album are two sides of the same coin. Coming back to the Entertainment Weekly interview. They spoke with Justin Tranter (one of the writers and creatives behind the album):
“Her new album, out April 2, can also be played as a companion piece to the doc, and covers similar emotional territory, both metaphorically and sometimes literally. "I've been working on it since Valentine's Day of 2018, and I can't tell you how many times this album has changed course," she says. It swelled over recent months to include 19 tracks and eventually took on its own hybrid double title, Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over.
Lovato wrote a number of the songs over the course of a COVID-safe songwriting camp last October. Justin Tranter was among the writers and producers who gathered for the creative staycation, dividing into different teams and working spaces and blasting through the translation of Lovato's raw emotions into lyrics and melodies. Over group dinners, Tranter says, "she's just sharing stories and we'd be like, 'Oh, that's a song, that's a song, that's a song.'" In the mornings, before each team split off, they would huddle to decide who was working on what. "And Demi would keep checking on us, to make sure we aren't f---ing it up."
Among the songs with parallel beats in the film are "Melon Cake" — about how Lovato would get watermelon "cakes" instead of the real thing on her birthday — and "I.C.U.," a stripped-down ballad about waking up in the hospital temporarily blind and not being able to recognize her sister at her bedside. "California Sober," shorthand for people in recovery from other substances who still find relief in marijuana, particularly for treatment of anxiety, is a nod to her key word, green.
"I never want to box myself into anything anymore," she says. "That's what, I think, led to all this — me putting pressure on myself and feeling pressured by others to be something of a role model." Lovato knows she'll likely face criticism from some fans about her embrace of moderation over abstinence. "They don't have to love it. They don't have to like it," she says. "As long as they have a conversation about it and they learn something, then I feel like I've done my part”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
There is a definitely evolution and new sound through Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. Bringing in, once more, the Entertainment Weekly interview, Lovato discusses some of the rawer songs that one will hear – she also is keen to highlight how there is catharsis and a sense of positivity that comes through:
“Two songs mine her experience with addiction in such a raw and explicit way, they make Lovato a little nervous about fans' reactions. As we talk, she wrings her hands, worrying at her fear as though she can feel it between her fingers. In "Dancing With the Devil," she sings about using a glass pipe and tinfoil while getting high. "That could trigger somebody in their addiction," she says. "Sometimes being descriptive can be triggering, but that's the sad, sad truth of how dark it can get. That's important to give people, too."
"The Way You Don't Look at Me," a standout track with a swirling melodic hook, opens with Lovato singing, "I've lost 10 pounds in two weeks, 'cause I told me I shouldn't eat." In the second verse, she adds, "I'm so scared if I undress that you won't love me after," and describes losing the focus of someone's attention as a pain that "hurts harder than my time in heaven."
Of her willingness to go there in her art, she tells EW, "If I'm painting a picture as an artist, telling my truth is so important to me. I don't censor my substance use in 'Dancing With the Devil.' I don't hold back from that, so I don't want to hold back from any other place in my authenticity, you know?" While I desperately hope that it doesn't trigger anybody, I also know how important it is for people that are going through those things to have an outlet to be able to listen to. I want to make sure that people know that I'm not glamorizing anything. That's the sad reality of how lonely it can be when you're in that position."
Still, this album isn't just a teenager who wants to curl up in the dark and cry. She's meant to be played loudly in the car, preferably driving down the Pacific Coast Highway. "She is — I'm cautious to use the word happy, because no one's ever happy 24/7, but I'm content," says Lovato. "I do have a lot of joy in my life today that has really come from spending so much time with myself. Yeah." Lovato exhales, shakes her head and smiles again. "And — she's also really queer. Really, really queer”.
I have chosen to review Dancing with the Devil, as the video has recently come out and it is a wonderful production. In terms of its story and visuals, I would encourage people to check it out as it is filmic and hugely memorable. The song itself is one of the highlights from Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over. There is a warning at the start of the video that there are depictions of sexual abuse and addiction that could be triggering to some people – I would advise caution to those who might find that upsetting. With soulful, brooding organs and a beautiful and emotive vocal from Lovato, the first verse sets up the story and a sense of inevitability: a young woman taking a drink or two, perhaps not knowing that things will spiral and change her: “It's just a little red wine, I'll be fine/Not like I wanna do this every night/I've been good, don't I deserve it?/I think I earned it, feels like it's worth it/In my mind, mind”. Seeing the start of the video where Lovato is lying in a hospital bed and hooked up to machines lends the lyrics and the song a real sense of nakedness and trauma that stays with you. In the way Lovato is very honest and open through her documentary, she wanted the video for Dancing with the Devil to be similarly honest. In the song, Lovato’s voice is at its peak. There is so much richness, authenticity and power from her delivery. One listens back to the song and you are constantly moved by it. In the chorus, we get flashes of Lovato sitting up in the hospital bed and shots of her in a bar downing various drinks. It is an interesting device that, perhaps, shows a sense of where Lovato was in the past. By that, I mean there is a realness to the images. One can imagine Lovato sitting in her hospital bed having recovered from an overdose thinking about her excessive days and how it impacted her.
The pre-chorus finds Lovato (in the video) in the back of a taxi looking dazed and inebriated. She sings of “Twisted reality, hopeless insanity/I told you I was okay, but I was lying”. We know what is coming and the fact the chorus will offer this release and explosion. True enough, Lovato’s voice rises as she sings about a time where she was close to death: “I was dancing with the devil, out of control/Almost made it to Heaven/It was closer than you know/Playing with the enemy, gambling with my soul/It's so hard to say no/When you're dancing with the devil/Mm-mm-mm, yeah, yeah”. We get interspersed audio clips of news reports that document Lovato being taken to hospital; reports that she is in a critical condition. Even though Lovato co-wrote Dancing with the Devil with Bianca Atterberry, John Ho and Mitch Allan, this is very much her truth and experience. The co-writers have not embellished the truth or fabricated anything. The stark honesty and explicit details makes the song feel incredibly real and personal: “It's just a little white line, I'll be fine/But soon, that little white line is a little glass pipe/Tinfoil remedy, almost got the best of me/I keep praying I don't reach the end of my lifetime, mm”. This is not an artist imagining headiness and excess; a sort of tall tale to provoke a reaction. Instead, it is a young woman who has survived something horrible who is sharing it with the listener. Even though it was necessary for the video, I can imagine it could have proved upsetting and very difficult for Lovato to revisit a time where she was found by ambulance crews and taken to hospital.
IN THIS PHOTO: In the Dancing with the Devil documentary, Demi Lovato reveals personal images of her recovery from her 2018 overdose
The video has this shocking element that, rather than putting the listener off, makes you respect Lovato more for being so brave and open. The bridge brings in subjects of redemption, religion and forgiveness: “Thought I knew my limit, yeah/I thought that I could quit it, yeah/I thought that I could walk away easily/But here I am, falling down on my knees/Praying for better days to come and wash this pain away/Could you please forgive me?/Lord, I'm sorry for dancing with the devil/Oh, yeah-yeah”. During that bridge, Lovato’s vocal reaches this crescendo peak where she is at her most pained and emotionally ravaged. Towards the end of the video, we see Lovato being washed by a nurse as she gets ready to leave. One shot closes in on a tattoo on Lovato’s neck that says ‘survivor’. That seems to be the the core of the song: someone who has survived a trauma and does not want to forget about it. That is a constant reminder of how close to the end she came; how she pulled through and has this second chance. Dancing with the Devil is one of the more emotional and harrowing songs. Rather than it being upsetting and dragging you down, you feel like you are following Lovato and you are by her side. You know that she survived and is better now, though one cannot help but be moved by the lyrics and how bad things were. The video is a remarkable illustration of her descent into drink and drugs. Scenes of her in a hospital bed and very near to death ranks alongside the most moving you will see in a music video this year! Again, it could not have been easy for her to revisit and relive such a bleak time. Dancing with the Devil is an extraordinary song from an exceptional album.
I am going to end by coming back to the interview with Entertainment Weekly. Whilst, for the album and documentary, Lovato has looked back and had to tackle her difficult past, she is looking ahead to a healthier and happier future. The Demi Lovato of today is very different to who she was years ago. It seems that wellbeing and stable mental-health are her priorities:
“While she waits with the rest of us for the world to open back up, and to the possibility of touring, she's also quite content to keep her energy focused on her own well-being. "When you start doing the work on yourself, you start noticing your intuition becoming louder and then more accurate. I'm just owning listening to my intuition, my needs, my wants in the moment, and moving forward. The more you try to be what others want you to be, the farther you get from your true self. It's only when you start allowing yourself the freedom to be yourself [that] all constraints are gone." She laughs, again, bright and boundless”.
I shall leave it there. Go and get the Dancing With the Devil... The Art of Starting Over album or listen to its on streaming services. It is a very strong, revealing and varied album that has these songs that tackle darker times. We also experience plenty of light and hope. It is not s surprise that so many critics have loved the album and encouraged others to check it out. I wonder where Demi Lovato will go from here and how her music will develop. She has survived some turbulent and harrowing years. Whilst one can never say for certain that things will be okay and she is through the very worst, the picture of Lovato now is much more heartening and encouraging. It is heart-breaking thinking about a time when she was close to death and in the eye of such a very traumatic and dark time. It is inspiring that she has come through that (one hopes) and has been so honest in her Dancing with the Devil documentary. In so many ways, we are…
VERY lucky to have her!
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