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Demi Lovato’s “Dancing With the Devil” Is Tough — But Beautiful — To Look At
The singer’s very public overdose and recovery are explicitly recounted on her new album and accompanying YouTube docuseries. But even in the awful moments, Demi Lovato makes us look.
Content warning: This article talks about substance use, mental health, and sexual assault.
It has to be said: Demi Lovato, the living human singer from Dallas, Texas, almost died. Heroin, laced with fentanyl, three strokes, a heart attack. Blind, left for dead. There is a documentary about it. A music video (for the single “Dancing With the Devil”) recounts the event in graphic detail. The album Dancing With the Devil…The Art of Starting Over is smeared with glue and tears and blood, a whole starting over starter kit.
Demi Lovato, the human singer from Texas, is alive. There’s no denying it. It’s her, looking viewers in the eye in the documentary, answering questions about sobriety. It’s her, and her colossal voice, searing through on several songs on the album. And it’s her alive-ness, her shrug-emoji, figuring-it-out existence that animates this album that is at times very good and at times ain’t pretty. No matter what you see when you look at Lovato’s seventh…
