Demi Lovato dished on everything from her dream collaborators to recording the new album Holy Fvck for ELLE‘s “Song Association” on Tuesday (Aug. 23).
“My dream collaboration, just because the inner emo kid in me has always wanted to work with this band, is Paramore,” Lovato revealed after throwing out a line from “Fences” for the prompt “smile.” (It’s true that the Disney Channel alum knows her way through the catalog of Hayley Williams and co.: Lovatics are sure to remember the singer blasting her way through “Misery Business” after accidentally cutting off the track at L.A.’s Emo Nite in her 2017 documentary Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated.)
Between singing snippets of songs like Avril Lavigne‘s “Keep Holding On,” The All-American Rejects‘ “Dirty Little Secret” and their own 2008 classic “Don’t Forget,” Lovato also revealed which song on her new album put her in the most vulnerable headspace in the studio. “I think the hardest song to write and record was ‘Happy Ending,’” she confessed, “because it was so emotional for me. Like, I’m so glad I wrote that. It was during a time of depression, and it was so cathartic. And it was the hardest to record ’cause I wanted to get all the emotion in it. So I wanted it to be perfect.”
Lovato eventually went a perfect 15-for-15 in the game, but not all their picks were pop-punk classics: She also earned points with Nina Simone‘s “I Put a Spell on You,” Justin Bieber‘s “Baby,” “Shout” by The Isley Brothers and Celine Dion‘s “My Heart Will Go On.”
Watch Lovato’s game of “Song Association,” and find out which of her old hits she would want to re-record for Holy Fvck, below.
