

“It’s actually based on a Bible verse,” explains Lovato. Amid the industrial goth-rock churn of “Heaven,” Lovato sings of choosing pleasure over piety: “Crucified for the life I’m living / Oh my god hope I’m forgiven / Going to hell ’cause it feels like heaven.” On “Holy Fvck,” the battle between Lovato’s sexual agency and her Baptist upbringing coalesce into an emotional maelstrom. These new songs are about taking the power back and owning my anger - something I pushed aside for years, because I thought it would make me less spiritual.” I’ve had a lot of anger since coming out of treatment. “But it wasn’t until recently that I felt like I could accomplish this sound. “Back when I worked on Disney Channel, I knew I could go this hard,” says Lovato. From them, Lovato learned to throw her body into her otherwise supple voice, suffusing every peak and valley of a song with a magnitude fitting for rock. While writing those early records, she sank her teeth into the tortured melodrama of acts like emo mainstays Paramore, Christian metal band Flyleaf and the pop-rock singer Kelly Clarkson, whose songs Lovato wore out in the privacy of her headphones. “Who says I can’t wear my Converse with a dress?” Lovato sang defiantly in her first solo hit, 2008’s “ La La Land” - a battle cry against the stringent parameters of both girlhood and child stardom. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart, Lovato was tapped by Disney label Hollywood Records to unleash her pop-rock potential on two records: 2008’s “Don’t Forget” and 2009’s “Here We Go Again,” which charted at No. Once the “Camp Rock” soundtrack soared to No. “There are things that happened within that time that I’m still overcoming,” she says. Depressed and reeling from the trauma of a rape she said occurred when she was 15, Lovato developed a cocaine habit, which she has said was enabled by promoters, and began cutting herself.

Meanwhile, Lovato struggled with bullies in school, to the point where she withdrew and completed her high school diploma at home. In 2002, she starred as Angela on the children’s show “Barney and Friends” and eventually played the lead in Disney Channel originals like the show “Sonny With a Chance” as well as the “Princess Protection Program,” which co-starred Selena Gomez, and “Camp Rock.” Lovato began a demanding regimen of dance, drama and music classes she also competed on the child beauty pageant circuit. Her mother, who later remarried, moved young Demi and her older sister to Dallas. They divorced when Demi was just 2 years old her father, prone to violent outbursts and substance abuse, remained estranged from his children until he died of cancer in 2013. Lovato was born in Albuquerque to Dianna De La Garza, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, and Patrick Lovato, a musician and audio engineer of Hispano descent. She picks at one of several growing holes in her mangled fishnet stockings. Gothic crosses dangle from her ears she wears a loose pinstripe blazer with a leather-studded collar and shiny Creeper shoes to match. At the center of the picture sat Lovato, raising two middle fingers to the camera “a funeral for my pop music,” she captioned the image on Instagram.Īlmost eight months later, inside a black-box rehearsal studio in Burbank, Lovato quietly strums a cream-shellacked Gibson electric guitar, her face obscured under her Joan Jett shag cut.

It also said a photo of the singer with representatives from her record label and management team was taken in New York the shoot was in Los Angeles.Īt her home studio in Los Angeles, Lovato posed for a photo with representatives from her record label and management team, led by Scooter Braun, who were all, incidentally, dressed in black. 18, 2022 An earlier version of this article said Lovato is 30.
