One of the major tenets of recovering is owning your past, and no one can accuse Demi Lovato of coming up short on that count. The singer, who long struggled with substance abuse, nearly died of an overdose in 2018, and over the past few weeks she’s told that story as both a confession and a cautionary tale in her new YouTube documentary, song and album, all of which are titled “Dancing With the Devil.”
She dropped the title track, which she wrote with Bianca Deiandra Atterberry, John Ho, Mitchell Allan Scherr, last night:
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 prayin’ I don’t reach the end of my lifetime
Twisted reality, hopeless insanity
I told you I was okay but I was lyin’
I was dancin’ with the devil, out of control
Almost made it to heaven, it was closer than you know
Playin’ with the enemy, gamblin’ with my soul
It’s so hard to say no, when you’re dancin’ with the devil
The album is due on April 2.
Lovato’s four-part YouTube Originals documentary “DemiLovato: Dancing with the Devil,” opened the 2021 SxSW festival.
“It’s hard to recall another musician, or any other recent celebrity, who’s been as open about as much personal upheaval as has Lovato, who emerged as a big-voiced child performer and whose pop music career has closely tracked the evolution of her emotional and physical wellness,” PvNew wrote. “onscreen titles inform us that the in-control, tactically charismatic entertainer we see at first was filmed for a planned concert documentary in 2018, shortly before Lovato (who has since re-emerged and restarted her music career) was hospitalized for a life-threatening drug overdose. The footage is now put to use through contrast — to show what Lovato, then, was able to hide, and to suggest that, now, she’s found an easier way of living with herself.
