Demi Lovato / Dancing With The Devil…The Art of Starting Over / 2020
Anyone
desperate, exhausted, pleading
A raw, unadorned plea for help from someone who has exhausted every private coping mechanism and finds language itself failing. The song documents the moment before a breaking point, where singing, praying, and confiding all collapse into the same hollow gesture.
isolation mental health crisis failure of communication loss of faith fame and loneliness
Who's speaking
First-person confessional; the speaker addresses no single person but throws the plea outward to inanimate objects, a deity, and an unspecified 'anyone' — the lack of a stable addressee is itself the point, dramatizing how thoroughly isolated the speaker is.
What happens
The song opens with a catalog of failed attempts at communication — instruments, imagination, drink — before admitting that even the voice itself has worn out. It moves to a confession of professional irony: despite having an audience of millions, the speaker feels unheard. The prayer to shooting stars and to God fails the same way, leading to the title's bare plea. A second verse reveals this was once about craving attention and has curdled into needing basic affection just to survive. The repetition at the end offers no resolution, only the plea restated with mounting exhaustion.
How it's built
Verse-chorus structure with a near-identical pre-chorus/chorus pair repeated twice, functioning less as development and more as circling — the song doesn't progress toward relief, it loops, formally enacting the stuckness it describes. The second chorus intensifies with a profanity that cracks the otherwise controlled surface, marking the emotional high point rather than a bridge or key change typically would.
Section by section
Opening verse
The speaker lists objects and substances turned into confidants, establishing a pattern of displaced communication before any human relationship is even mentioned. The list format itself suggests desperation — trying everything, in order, because nothing has worked.'
First pre-chorus
“I feel stupid when I sing”
The irony of a professional singer feeling foolish singing is the emotional pivot of the song: performance has become disconnected from genuine expression, leaving the speaker feeling exposed rather than heard.
Chorus
The plea strips language down to its barest form, naming no specific person because the speaker has run out of specific people to ask. The address to a higher power reads as a last resort rather than settled faith.
Second verse
A retrospective admission reframes the opening — what looked like isolation from fame is revealed as a reversal of old desires. Once wanting visibility, the speaker now wants only minimal human contact, suggesting burnout rather than simple loneliness.
Second pre-chorus
“why the fuck am I praying anyway”
The profanity breaks the song's otherwise restrained diction, functioning as the moment control slips — a flash of anger directed at faith itself for not answering.
Outro repetition
The final return to the opening pre-chorus without alteration denies the song a resolved ending, leaving the plea unanswered and the loop unbroken.
Craft
- anaphora
- Repeated attempts beginning with 'I tried' or 'I talked' pile up across the verses, building a sense of exhausted effort through accumulation rather than escalation.
- irony
- The contrast between having 'a hundred million' listeners and feeling unheard turns a literal fact about fame into evidence of emotional starvation.
- apostrophe
- Addressing a piano, shooting stars, and God as if they could answer underscores the speaker's isolation — these are all substitutes for a human listener who isn't there.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a document of acute depressive isolation and crisis, written from inside the feeling rather than after resolving it — notable given the album's broader framing around addiction and overdose. An alternative reading focuses on the specific loneliness of fame: the irony of having an audience of millions while feeling fundamentally unheard, making this as much a critique of parasocial visibility as a personal cry for help. Both readings coexist without contradiction.
Context
This track opens Lovato's 2021 album about her 2018 overdose and recovery, reportedly written and recorded in a single emotional take shortly before that event; the artist has spoken publicly about using music to process addiction and mental health struggles, which supports (without needing to be stated as fact in the lyric itself) a reading of the song as nearly diaristic.
Listen for
- the strain or cracking in the vocal delivery, especially on the repeated chorus
- the way the pre-chorus returns nearly unchanged each time, resisting musical resolution
- the shift in tone when profanity breaks into the otherwise careful lyric
- the absence of any instrumental build toward catharsis or relief
About Demi Lovato
Demetria Devonne "Demi" Lovato is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. After appearing on the children's television series Barney & Friends (2002–2004), she starred in the Disney Channel short series As the Bell Rings (2007–2008), and as the titular character on the sitcom Sonny with a Chance (2009–2011).
b. 1992 / United States
Full biography and catalogue