Former Fifth Harmony singer Camila Cabello is moving full steam ahead with her debut solo LP, The Hurting, The Healing, The Loving, and she's starting to stoke excitement for its long-awaited release by dropping the lead single, "Crying In The Club," on Friday.
The bouncy party song -- penned by prolific singer-songwriter Sia -- samples Christina Aguilera's 1999 bop "Genie In A Bottle" and is laced with lyrics of letting go and experiencing freedom, a feeling she accomplished while working on her own music.
"For me, the club is kind of like a euphemism. The lyrics say stuff like, 'Let the music lift you up like you've never been this free, let the music lift you up like you've never been so high,'" she told On Air with Ryan Seacrest on Friday. "I feel like for me, that was more of what the writing process and what the album making process was saying to me."
She added, "It's kind of like shaking the pain off, and it has kind of this cathartic intensity to it. I feel like that's what music does for a lot of people. That's what it does for me, and I think that's why dancing and all that stuff helps."
Before she started on her new album, Camila was in a negative space of hopelessness for two years. In an emotional Instagram post she shared earlier this week, Cabello called her album "the story of my journey from darkness into light, from a time I was lost to a time when I found myself again." Though "Crying In The Club" serves as the lead single, Cabello said the story behind the album starts with the second release, the hotel bathroom-penned "I Have Questions," which is a song that cites a relationship that wiped her out creatively and emotionally for six months.
"Right after that period I stopped writing … I went back [to the studio] and then a coincidence happened where I saw who inspired the song," she explained. "So then I pulled up the lyrics the next day at the session and that's how that song happened."
Cabello also goes on to explain how the writing process for the album was therapeutic and allowed her to get in touch with the emotions that brought her to a "rocky point." Through songwriting, she was able to embrace her negative emotions and grieve properly until she found herself in a better headspace.
"It was like my way of dealing with emotions that I didn't even know how to deal with before because it was too much for me to handle," she said. "Basically through this writing process, I felt like for the first time, I was communicating with myself, I was being vulnerable and honest with myself, and through that process, I felt like I just found my sanity again and found myself again."
Cabello will deliver a debut performance of "Crying In The Club" at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards this Sunday (May 22), where she will join the stage alongside Miley Cyrus, The Chainsmokers, Cher, Celine Dion, Drake, and more. The BBMAs -- led by Drake and The Chainsmokers with 22 nods -- airs live on May 21 (8 p.m. ET) on ABC.
"Crying In The Club" is available on iTunes here.
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