
Lovato recalled worrying that she would get in trouble.

“What fascinates me,” she said, “is metal,” naming very heavy bands. A few months before she turned 16 and released her debut album, she was on tour with the squeaky-clean Jonas Brothers and answered a reporter’s questions about her musical tastes. When she was a Disney star, Lovato had an edgy candor that distinguished her from the pack. “And that’s ultimately what my fans feel with me.” “I did definitely look up to her and I valued her vulnerability and transparency with her audience because it bred that connection that I felt to her,” she said. “Amy,” the 2015 documentary about the British musician, played at Lovato’s rehab facility. That same date seven years later, Lovato began the night of partying that ended in the I.C.U. And Braun listed the one goal he has for her moving forward: “To live a happy life.”ĪMY WINEHOUSE WAS found dead of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011. “This last year provided me so much self-growth and was so beneficial to my spiritual evolution,” she said. She’s increasingly devoted herself to activism, meditation and, despite her vision difficulties, reading. But the changes Lovato has undergone - particularly since her August birthday, she said - have put her on a different course. “And by the time she got home, she texted me: You have to take her on, this is my friend. “I asked Ariana’s opinion and she said, let me go to coffee with her,” he added. “I saw that she was scared, like, no one’s going to take me on,” Braun said of their initial meeting in an interview. But re-entering the pop mainstream after a very public overdose on hard drugs wasn’t a guarantee. She had a new team led by Scooter Braun, the manager and entrepreneur who oversees the careers of Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, and returned to performing at the Grammys and the Super Bowl. In early 2020, a pause wasn’t in Lovato’s plans. (She can no longer drive and described the lingering effects as resembling sunspots.) The drug dealer who brought her heroin that night sexually assaulted her, then left her close to death. She had pneumonia from asphyxiating on her vomit she suffered brain damage from the strokes, and has lasting vision problems. It caused three strokes, a heart attack and organ failure. Her overdose came after six years of sobriety, during which Lovato felt increasingly hemmed in by the measures her longtime managers took to help her stay on track. “Dancing With the Devil” is filled with fresh admissions that betray previous obfuscations. A lot depends on how much a musician reveals to her audience. There are the otherworldly untouchables who appear to hover tantalizingly out of reach (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga), and the seemingly fully knowables who feel just an arm’s length away (Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus).

Pop stardom is a high-wire act on the continuum between fantasy and reality, spectacle and authenticity, escaping and relating.

The film and album are part of a comeback attempt that puts a core part of the Demi Lovato proposition to the test: How honest can she really be? She reveals excruciating details about a history of sexual assault, self-harm and family trauma, one troubling scenario colliding into another like dominoes. Ratner - and doesn’t gloss over the ugliest realities. Lovato’s film, which follows “Simply Complicated” in 2017, is all tension - 90-plus minutes of mostly interviews directed by Michael D.
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She got her start on kids’ TV and made the tricky leap to adult stardom, releasing six albums (two platinum, four gold), serving as a judge on “The X Factor,” acting on “Glee” and “Will & Grace” and amassing 100 million Instagram followers - all while managing an eating disorder since she was a child, drug addiction that started in her teens, coming out as queer and the constant pressure of being an exceptionally famous person.ĭocumentaries from pop stars about themselves have become a cottage industry, but most feel like sanitized marketing tools and grasp for friction, like the stress of fame or loneliness. Lovato, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, actress and budding activist who has been in show business since she was 6 and a household name since her teens, is not just adaptable - she is one of the most resilient pop cultural figures of her time. “I didn’t leave myself time to really feel sad about it. “It was interesting how fast I adapted,” she said in a recent interview. Blind spots made it nearly impossible to see head-on, so she peered at her phone through her peripheral vision and typed using voice notes.

It took about two months to recover enough sight to read a book, and she passed the time catching up on 10 years’ worth of sleep, playing board games or taking a single lap around the hospital floor for exercise. Demi Lovato woke up legally blind in an intensive care unit after the July 2018 drug overdose that nearly killed her.
