In July 2018, “Sorry Not Sorry” crooner Demi Lovato gave her fans quite the scare when she was hospitalised for a drug overdose.
The songstress who has been very open about her addiction is gearing up to perform an unreleased single titled “Anyone” at tomorrow’s 62nd Grammy Awards. The song was written four days before her overdose.
Ahead of her performance, the 27-year-old singer sat down with Zane Lowe for New Music Daily on Apple Music’s “Beats 1,” and opened up about the journey that led to her hospitalisation.
“Never once did I ever think that I was gonna end up where I did,” says the singer, prompting Zane Lowe to ask if she was “ready to talk about what happened.”
Speaking about the song “Anyone”, she said she “in a state of mind where I felt like I was okay, but clearly I wasn’t.” She wishes she could “go back in time and help that version of myself.” She said:
“How did nobody listen to this song and think, ‘Lets help this girl? I feel like I was in denial, but then a part of me definitely knew what I was singing for,” she explained. “I was singing this song, and I didn’t even realise that the lyrics were so heavy and emotional until after the fact. And that’s what kind of brings us to this moment.”
She went on:
“I remember being in the hospital and listening to this song. It was about a week after I had been in the hospital, and I was finally awake, and 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.’”
“A part of me was looking towards the future because that’s what I do,” she said. “When I’m struggling or I’m going through a rough time, I look towards the future for hope and to change my perspective on things. Especially when I go through something difficult, I stop and I say, ‘Why is God putting me through this?’ And sometimes it doesn’t make sense in that moment, but kind of like the song, I recorded it, went through everything and then it made sense later. Like, okay, that’s why these lyrics were so emotional when I was singing it, because they were actually so far deep in my soul of like asking for help that you can really feel that when you listen back to it.”
She further explains that although music has been “a huge coping mechanism” as well as a great source of hope and healing, “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.”
“Obviously, when I look back, I can put puzzle pieces together, but it wasn’t conscious. It wasn’t in that moment that I could really go back and say, ‘Okay, I was aware that it was gonna lead to this.’ Never once did I ever think that I was gonna end up where I did.”
On talking about what happened, she said:
“I’m in the process of becoming more and more ready as time goes by. I think it’s taken me a long time to be able to get this far, which is performing a song that’s so vulnerable to me on a stage in front of all of my peers and coworkers and even people that I look up to. That’s kind of nerve-racking to think about, but at the same time, I’m grateful that I have this opportunity to sit here and talk to you and tell a little bit of my story. I think as time goes on, I’m gonna tell more and more about it.”
Demi said the next song she plans to release covers “more of the story,” whereas “Anyone” is more about where she was “right before and right afterwards.”
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