Demi Lovato has penned a powerful new song that gets political and takes aim at Donald Trump, and she’s not at all afraid of what people might think. The new single, “Commander In Chief,” calls out Trump directly for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 216,000 people in the U.S.—the highest number of any country in the world. She also takes aim at his greed, his poor handling of the California bushfires and the cowardice of him hiding in a bunker during the Black Lives Matter protests and his manipulation of systems for personal gain. She really went off!
“We’re in a state of crisis, people are dying while you line your pockets deep,” she sings on the piano ballad. “Commander in Chief, how does it feel to still be able to breathe?”
Lovato explained her intention behind the song to CNN, saying it was a way she could use her platform to directly address Trump and his actions. “There’s been so many times that I’ve wanted to write the President a letter or sit down with him and ask him these questions,” she said in the interview. “And then I thought, ‘I don’t really actually want to do that,’ and I thought one way that I could do that is writing a song and releasing it for the whole world to hear, and then he has to answer those questions to everyone and not just me.”
The song was produced by Bille Eilish’s brother FINNEAS and co-written by Julia Michaels, FINNEAS, Justin Tranter, and Eren Cannata. Posting a snippet of the song—which you can hear below—to her Instagram, Lovato urged her fans to vote. “Please join me and vote in this year’s election,” she captioned the post, directing people to I Will Vote’s website.
While most of Lovato’s fans applauded the singer for speaking out about the president’s failings, some of her followers were upset she “got political.” For the record, Lovato has been openly critical of many of the Trump administration’s actions and policies for a while. She also actively campaigned for Hilary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
Lovato took to her Instagram stories to respond to the criticism. “I literally don’t care if this ruins my career,” she wrote in the comment she reshared to her Stories. “As much as I would like to be sad that I disappointed you, I’m too busy being bummed that you expect me, a queer Hispanic woman, to silence my views/beliefs in order to please my audience. I.e. your family.”
She’s right and she should say it! Lovato compared her own situation to the way another celeb, Taylor Swift, has been treated for voicing a political view. “For years she got trashed because she wasn’t taking a stance and wasn’t standing up for these rights and she kind of took a back seat,” she shared to CNN. “Now she’s become very political and there are people that are unhappy with that too… You have to live what feels authentic to you. To me, that’s using my platform to speak out about the things that I see that are wrong.”
A music video to accompany the new song is also dropping later today, you can keep an eye out for when it drops on YouTube here.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
