“Substance” by Demi Lovato, Sunday, October 8, 2023

October 08, 2023

To say that Demi Lovato has been on a journey is an understatement. Following the singer’s 2018 overdose and rehab, the singer has been deconstructing the meaning of fame and sexual identity and where her/their story fits into those themes. Along the way the singer came out as non-binary, using they/them pronouns, but earlier this year, the singer decided to use she/her pronouns after feeling exhausted trying to educate others about the singer’s identity. But last year the signer released an album on which she processes this journey. And of course, HOLY FVCK had its own dose of controversy.

IS ANYBODY DRIVING? A cover depicting the singer lying tied up on a bed shaped like a cross and a title called HOLY FVCK caused the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency to ban the poster promoting the album and the tour. The cover of the album harkens back to ‘80s “satanic panic” metal album covers and gives listeners a preview of the musical styles the album would contain. The album cycle began in January 2022 when Demi Lovato announced on Instagram that the singer had performed a “funeral” for her old pop music. The post included Lovato giving two middle fingers. The songs on HOLY FVCK are all in the style of pop punk or hard rock, and the darker music serves as a vehicle to express the singer’s anger towards a religious upbringing, being taken advantage of by the industry, and processing sexual identity. Lavoto had gone into explicit detail in two documentaries, 2017’s Simply Complicated and 2021’s Dancing with the Devil, but HOLY FVCK is a processing of those themes in musical form.

DON’T WANNA END UP IN A CASKET, HEAD FULL OF MAGGOTS. “Substance” was the second single from HOLY FVCK. The song didn’t chart on Billboard’s Hot 100, only on the Alternative charts. Demi Lovato had been a rock adjacent artist even early in her career, but a collaboration with Fall Out Boy in 2015 on the single “Irresistible” seemed to set the singer on a path towards her current trajectory. In the song “Substance,” Lavato employs the double meaning of the word substance. The primary meaning of the word in the song is the search for something real. But in her search for substance, Lovato turned to drugs, another substance that “only left [her] high, lonely and loveless.” The music video is influenced by anarchist punk rock. The focus on breaking feels purely emotional in the video, rather than a planned attack on the system. This is not to say that Lovato is incapable or hasn’t even already organized some kind revenge on the system. I will be interested to see what Lovato comes up with in the future. But for now let’s watch it all break!