Demi Lovato got emotional during the performance of her new song, “Anyone,” at the 2020 Grammys, marking her first performance since her 2018 overdose scare.
Taking the stage at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Calif. Sunday, the 27-year-old started to sing and her voice cracked, forcing her to start over.
“I tried to talk to my piano / I tried to talk to my guitar / I tried to talk to my imagination / Confided into alcohol / I tried and tried and tried more,” she sang. “Told secrets ’til my voice was sore / Tired of empty conversation / ‘Cause no one hears me anymore.”
Lovato, wearing a white ball gown, had tears streaming down her face as she belted out the new song and did not miss a note. “I feel stupid when I sing / Nobody’s listening to me,” she sang while crying.
Days before her performance, Lovato revealed to Zane Lowe on the Beats 1 show that she wrote the song just a few days before being hospitalized in July 2018. At the time, Lovato was rushed from her home in the Hollywood Hills to a Los Angeles-area hospital after paramedics found her unconscious. She was reportedly treated with Narcan, an emergency treatment for narcotics overdoses.
“This song was written and recorded actually very shortly before everything happened,” she told Lowe. “So I recorded the vocals for it four days before … The lyrics took on a totally different meaning.”
The Disney alum said listening to the new song now makes her believe it was a “cry for help.”
“I almost listen back and hear these lyrics as a cry for help,” she said. “You kind of listen back to it and you kind of think, how did nobody listen to this song and think, ‘Let’s help this girl.’ I even think that I was recording it in a state of mind where I felt like I was okay, but clearly I wasn’t. And I even listened back to it and I’m like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help that version of myself.’ ”
Also around the time of her overdose, she released the song “Sober,” in which she revealed she had fallen off the wagon after six years of sobriety. Lovato began to weep during a show in Brazil in June 2018 while singing the lyrics, “And I’m sorry for the fans I lost / Who watched me fall again / I want to be a role model, but I’m only human.”
After revealing her near-fatal overdose, Lovato promised fans that the next time they would see her, it would be during a performance. “I told you the next time you’d hear from me I’d be singing,” she wrote in her Grammy performance announcement. That promise, she said on Beats 1, helped her get through her tough time.
“I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. And it’s going to be hard not to like go onstage and just like word vomit everything,” Lovato said. “Like I just want to go up there and tell my story. And I have three minutes to do so. So I’m just going to do the best that I can. And it’s only telling a fraction of my story, but it’s still a little bit, and it’s enough to kind of show the world where I’ve been.”
While “Anyone” is a raw ballad detailing her struggles, Lovato promised that she will reveal even more about her difficult time in forthcoming music.
“I think it’s taken me a long time to be able to even get this far, which is performing a song that’s so vulnerable to me on a stage in front of all my peers and coworkers and even people that I look up to,” she said. “That’s kind of nerve-wracking to think about. But at the same time I’m grateful that I have this opportunity to like sit here and talk to you and tell a little bit of my story. I think as time goes on, I’m going to tell more and more about it.”
Lovato also spoke in great detail about her emotional journey and her recovery, saying she found solace in church during her struggles.
“I was not really a big church person, like even a month ago,” Lovato said. “I shied away from church for many years. I didn’t feel welcome. I was also like questioning my sexuality. I just found a place out here in LA that like accepts me for who I am, no matter who I love. And there’s no judgment. And that’s what I needed.”
Religion, she said, played a big part in that road to recovery as she found a place to practice faith.
“I tried to seek God through other experiences, whether that’s through other relationships or substances,” she said. “And it’s just like, I had to realize that the God that I’m seeking, the God that I love and the God that I want to be my God is available 24/7, always at an arm’s length and constantly with me. I need to focus on myself and my relationship with myself and my relationship with God.”
Speaking just before the Grammy performance, she told Beats 1 that she’s excited for her comeback, which includes a National Anthem performance at the 2020 Super Bowl on Feb. 2.
“I just feel safer and I feel renewed,” she said.