Demi Lovato’s new video for “Dancing With the Devil” chronicles the terrifying night of her 2018 overdose. It can be found on the album Dancing With the Devil…The Art of Starting Over was released at the same time. Ariana Grande, Sam Fischer, Saweetie, and Noah Cyrus contributed to the album.
The singer recreates the fateful events leading up to her hospitalization and near-fatal overdose in the video, which she co-directed with Michael D. Ratner, who also directed her Dancing With the Devil documentary.
The picture shows what she was wearing, how her hair looked, and certain parts of the night.
She can be seen in a bar, in a room unzipping a bag ostensibly containing drugs, unconscious as she is touched by others, on a gurney, and fighting for her life in a hospital bed hooked up to machines while singing.
The lyrics speak to her temptations as she fights her addiction and how crossing the line between sobriety and addiction snowballs out of control.
She sings, “Thought I knew my limit, yeah/I thought I could quit it, yeah.” “I thought I’d be able to walk away easily/But here I am, on my knees/Praying for better days to come and wash this pain away/Could you please forgive me?/Lord, I’m so sorry for dancing with the devil/Could you please forgive me?”
Lovato described the song as a “final send-off of letting it go, letting that night go — because you’ll be able to see it all” in a YouTube Originals’ Released episode leading up to the video.
The album is a companion to the documentary and follows 2017’s Tell Me You Love Me, streamed below. It follows her through the overdose and her subsequent recovery.
