This review contains mentions of rape and sexual assault.
At the 2008 American Music Awards, Demi Lovato – the then-Disney lead actress for her star – came in Camp Rock– smiled when a red carpet reporter asked about the inspiration behind her pop punk solo music. “Believe it or not, I was through a lot as a sixteen-year-old,” she replied with a dignified giggle. “Come on, how much heartbreak can you have when you’re 16?” the man insisted. “Oh, a lot,” Lovato replied immediately.
In the years that followed, while dutifully playing the role of a chaste pop star – though fascinated by metal music – Lovato struggled under the immense pressure of the media and the music industry (child stars, we so often forget, are workers). Behind the scenes, Lovato struggled with eating disorders, self-harm, and substance use. She recently revealed that she was raped at the age of 15; although she reported the abuse to adults, the perpetrator continued to work with her. After she first entered a treatment center at the age of 18, Lovato was transparent about her struggles with addiction and recovery.
In the summer of 2018, after six years of sobriety, Lovato relapsed. On July 24, she received an opioid overdose, which resulted in three strokes, a heart attack, multiple organ failure, pneumonia, permanent brain damage and permanent vision problems. As she explains in the recent documentary Dancing with the devil, the drug dealer who delivered to Lovato that night sexually assaulted her and left her for dead. It’s a wonder she survived.
In addition to the documentary and a series of denominational interviews, Lovato’s seventh album arrived, Dancing with the devil … The art of starting over takes control of the story. In 19 issues, the 28-year-old leans into her personal struggles; the pop star who once claimed she wanted to be “free from all demons” has seemingly accepted the reality that she must live next to them. On the power ballad ‘Anyone’ Lovato tries to find solace in her art, but she falls short. “A hundred million stories / And a hundred million songs / I feel stupid when I sing / Nobody listens to me,” she calls. Written before her relapse, it’s a cry for help from a place of loneliness and despair. The sneaky ‘Dancing with the Devil’ sketches the steep slope that led to an overdose: ‘A little red wine’ became ‘a little white line’ and then ‘a glass pipe’. “ICU (Madison’s Lullabye)” relives the moment when Lovato woke up in the hospital, legally blind and unable to recognize her little sister.
After this gloomy three song prologue, Dancing with the devil expands to reveal the person Lovato is – or wants to be – today; there is a lot of sloughing, rewritten endings and references to reaching heaven. While Lovato’s previous record, 2017’s Tell me you love me She has immersed herself in pool party R&B and electropop and explores a range of influences from the soft rock of ‘The Art of Starting Over’ to a haunting cover of Gary Jules ‘haunting cover of Tears for Fears’ ‘Mad World’. ‘Lonely People’ aims for a singalong in the stadium with a chorus that mentions Romeo and Juliet and undermines the positive vibes with the most grim closing thoughts: ‘The truth is we all die alone / So you better love yourself before you go.’
At nearly an hour in length, the album seeks to cover a tremendous amount of ground, venting years of trauma, and reconfiguring Lovato’s public identity. She offers a union statement about her recovery – she is “California Sober” – and her sexuality. In ‘The Kind of Lover I Am’, a kind of sequel to her bi-curious anthem ‘Cool for the Summer’ from 2015, Lovato fully embraces her queerness and her overflowing heart. “I don’t care if you have a dick / I don’t care if you have a WAP / I just want to love / You know what I mean,” she says during the outro. “Like, at some point I just want to share my life with someone.”
Lovato is by no means the first pop star to speak out about the continued sexual and emotional abuse in the music industry; like Kesha, her heartbreaking revelations refuse to be pushed under the rug for fear of bad publicity or the isolation of a fan base. But even if Lovato has a happy or optimistic tone, it’s hard to see beyond the tragedy at the core of the album. The synthetic “Melon Cake” takes its name from the birthday dessert Lovato’s team served her in the years leading up to her overdose: a cylinder of ripe watermelon frosted in fat-free whipped cream and topped with sprinkles and candles. Even when Lovato confidently declares that melon cookies are a thing of the past, the picture is so depressing it’s hard to focus on anything else, especially what’s meant to be a fun song. But isn’t that what so many of us are doing to survive? We try to reformulate our traumas as lessons learned; we use humor as a defense mechanism; we move on because dwelling in guilt or shame fosters the destructive spiral.
One of the rare moments when Dancing with the devil Going beyond a 1: 1 recreation of Lovato’s life is “With Him Last Night”, a devious duet with Ariana Grande. Both artists experienced a gruesome tragedy and responded with elegance and empathy, writing songs about their experiences, both for themselves and for anyone who would see their own trauma again. But “With Him Last Night” doesn’t aim for catharsis, at least not explicitly. Instead, the two tremble blasély over lost innocence and deceit in the shadow of “him”, apparently Satan. It’s the closest thing to escapism on an album that focuses entirely on the harsh reality.
At the other end of the spectrum is the music video for “Dancing With the Devil,” which recreates the night of Lovato’s overdose and the ensuing struggle for her life in the ICU in astonishing detail. There’s the machine that cleansed her blood through a vein in her neck, the duffel bag believed to be full of drugs, and the sponge bath that gently brushes the “survivor” tattoo on her neck. Although Lovato co-directed the video, claiming that sharing her lived-in experiences is part of her healing process, the image feels almost unnecessarily voyeuristic: an artist recreating their worst moment in the belief that it speaks for itself.
Dancing with the devil asks you to trust that what Demi Lovato has been through is enough. The music will no doubt reach listeners who struggle with their own burdens and see Lovato as a role model, just as they have since she was that teen on the red carpet forced to justify the depths of her lived-through experience. This take-off-the-makeup moment brings us closer to her than ever before: the four-part documentary rollout, the multiple album editions, the no-hold-barred press tour. But the diary nature of the music and the blunt force with which it is delivered shows Demi Lovato the person and Demi Lovato puts the artist aside. It’s an unenviable position: to have a story so gripping that the emotional catharsis we feel in real life overshadows what she wanted to create on the album.
Buy: Rough Trade
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