The Art of Starting Over.
To make it, she had to rethink everything.
Like a lot of us living through this past year, time moves differently now forDemi Lovato.
Demi Lovato.Lauren Dukoff for EW
“I can’t predict what my needs are going to be in 10 minutes,” she says.
“And I can’t predict what they’ll be 10 days from now.”
And she’s okay with that.
Demi Lovato.Lauren Dukoff for EW
“It’s not about future tripping,” she says calmly.
“And it’s not about dwelling on the past.”
“I’ve had to reshape my thinking,” she says.
Lauren Dukoff for EW
“I used to just say everything.
Now I keep some things to myself.”
She has better boundaries now but fewer rules.
Lauren Dukoff for EW
She eats what feels right, wears oversize sweatshirts and Birkenstocks, and doesn’t work out to exhaustion.
She cut off her long hair, then cropped it again, even shorter.
She has a healer she works with closely and meditates every day.
Lauren Dukoff for EW
She binge-watchesThe Walking Deadwith friends over FaceTime.
She swears she’s done with the hard stuff but still smokes weed.
She’s not just willing butexcitedto talk about how queer she is.
And for the first time in her life, she takes weekends off.
“That was never an option for me growing up.
It’s empowering to be like, ‘Hey, my values have changed.
“One year ago today, I had not met my ex-fiance!
The amount that has changed in 12 months is crazy.”
She stops herself: “I hate that word,” she says, “but it iswild.”
She laughs a lot.
Sometimes her eyes well up with tears, and then she laughs again.
“She’s now really done the work.")
Does she have other #MeToo stories?Yes.
Lovato doesn’t name the perpetrator but reveals that her first sexual experiencewas being raped as a teen.
My whole point is just that it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.”
If it comes from the ground, it’s safe for me.
She leans forward, giggling a bit as she speaks directly into the computer’s camera.
“The key word isgreen.”
The Art of Starting Over.
Lovato wrote a number of the songs over the course of a COVID-safe songwriting camp last October.
“I never want to box myself into anything anymore,” she says.
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.
“I don’t care about the singles,” he says.
“I care about the story.”
That’s not to say the album doesn’t sound commercial, because it does.
Even the darker songs have a lightness you might not expect for such heavy emotional territory.
“As a person, she always shares her vulnerability with the world.
But to have that now really come into the music is pretty awesome.”
“That could trigger somebody in their addiction,” she says.
That’s important to give people, too.”
I don’t censor my substance use in ‘Dancing With the Devil.’
I want to verify 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.
Lovato exhales, shakes her head and smiles again.
“And she’s also really queer.
Really,reallyqueer.”
“I really had myself fooled, because it was the safe and expected thing,” she says.
Now that I’m not engaged or married and I’m okay, I’m like, ‘Wow.
Isn’t that so much more empowering?’
It’s not this false sense of security."
The second it was off, I was like, ‘You know what?
I don’t need that.’
It looks like stability, but it doesn’t mean that it is.
And I don’t actually grow through stability.
I find that I like living not in chaos or crisis, but in fluidity.
She vaguely affirmed that she wasn’t exclusively into men, though publicly she was seen only with boyfriends.
Post-Ehrich, she’s finally eager to make that declaration loud and clear.
(She also credits the Selma Blair-Sarah Michelle Gellar kiss inCruel Intentionsas an early eye-opener.)
“I think time is everything,” she says.
I was so ready to be an activist.
And then people would ask me, ‘Why are you so passionate about this?’
And I would clam up, like…" She shakes her head again.
I wanted so badly to be the person that I am today.
I just wanted to find out who I was."
She laughs, again, bright and boundless.
It’s officially the weekend.
“I always thought there was a book or something that would tell me who I was.
Really, it’s just like, ‘No, bitch, just do what makes you happy!’
You’re like, ‘It can’t be that simple.’
Additional reporting by Sydney Bucksbaum.
Motion and still photography by Lauren Dukoff for EW.
