Disney star Demi Lovato has definitely had some tough times lately, but if we”re to believe the lyrics in her new single, the Toby Gad-produced “Skyscraper,” she is coming through the other side made stronger by her travails.
The ballad, which hit No. 1 on iTunes today, features a straight-ahead video, much of it a close-up of Lovato”s face as she very heavily emotes through the often anguished lyrics while walking through the sand. No one else appears in the Mark Pellington-directed clip as the focus is clearly on showing the pain she”s gone through and from which she is rising, not like the proverbial phoenix, but like a skyscraper. The video keeps the intensely personal tone of the song, but also addresses her cutting symbolically by showing broken glass, as well as a heart that remains in tact. Pellington, who”s best known for his tremendous direction on Pearl Jam”s “Jeremy,” U2″s “One” and The Fray”s “How To Save A Life,” brings a sense of intimacy to the clip despite the often wide-open spaces.
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Lovato, who was hospitalized for her eating disorder, cutting, depression and her unmedicated bi-polar disease, has bravely been talking about what she went though and her decision to quit her Disney show, “Sonny With a Chance,” and get help. For that alone, she deserves tremendous credit. In a moving interview airing on E Online, the 18-year old talks about first feeling suicidal when she was seven years old.
Is it a great song? No. Does she deliver it with a bit too much melodrama? Yes, but there”s no doubting her sincerity. And if the song and/or video can help one girl who has followed her and her brave admissions or if the song makes one girl”s day better so she believes that she, too, can rise like a “Skyscraper,” then we can live with her lack of understatement.
“Skyscraper” is the first single from Lovato”s third still-untitled album, which will come out this fall.