Camila Cabello Says Her Emotional Solo Album Is The Result Of Being ‘Broken’

Camila Cabello’s been through some rough times, and she’ll be telling us all about it on her upcoming album, The Hurting, The Healing, The Loving. The former Fifth Harmony singer announced her debut solo album on Monday in a heartfelt note to fans. She also revealed that the album’s first single, “I Have Questions,” will be out on Friday (different from the leaked title one radio station suggested).

“’The hurting the healing the loving’ is the story of my journey from darkness into light, from a time when I was lost to a time when I found myself again,” Cabello wrote on Twitter, explaining how “I Have Questions” was written a year ago while on tour with Fifth Harmony.

The single will be a heartbreaking one, according to Cabello, who wrote the song on a bathroom floor. “I was completely broken during that time, I was in the kind of pain that’s uncomfortable to talk about, and it was the kind of chapter you never want to read out loud.”

Cabello left Fifth Harmony in a somewhat messy breakup in December, when she finished up her last performance obligation with the band and then announced her solo career. While in the group, she already had two solo songs: her duet with Shawn Mendes, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” and her song with Machine Gun Kelly, “Bad Things.” When Billboard asked if she had maintained contact with her Fifth Harmony bandmates in February, she replied “no.”

If you can’t read the full post on Twitter (that font is tiny, I’ll tell ya), here it is in full:

’The hurting the healing the loving’ is the story of my journey from darkness into light, from a time when i was lost to a time when i found myself again. The story behind the album starts with the second song that you’ll hear called ‘I have questions’ which I started writing in a hotel bathroom on tour a little over a year ago. i was completely broken during that time, i was in the kind of pain that’s uncomfortable to talk about, and it was the kind of chapter you never want to read out loud. I couldn’t write another song for 6 months because writing meant i had to feel everything, and i wasn’t ready to do that yet. so when i graduated from hotel bathrooms to studios to make my first album, i was making music about everything BUT what i was going through, it was like a secret burning on my tongue till one day i just could not run anymore. i pulled up the lyrics from the year before, and ‘i have questions’ was written. after that i wrote a sad song everyday, everything i wanted to say, every lyric on my phone, i said everything until i got tired of writing about it. until i was sick of the sad songs!!!!! as i got happier and happier, i realized the songs were getting happier and happier. and i realized i wasn’t making music just to make an album anymore, i was making this music to heal. it wasn’t until i had made enough songs to listen back to and realized i could hear myself coming back through these songs. i didn’t write it with the intention of delivering a message, but i realized the message was in the hurting, the healing, and the loving. i might have thought the hurting was my enemy before, but she became the best listener… i might have thought i was too impatient for the healing, and it did feel like sometimes she was taking forever, but i realized it made me appreciate her so much more when she arrived. and the loving, i wouldn’t have known how beautiful she was if i couldn’t miss her all that time.
to the hurting, thank you for teaching me that even if at night you take me into the deepest depths of the ocean, i will still wake in the morning.
to the healing, thank you for the tears. when they finally came, they tasted like God.
to the loving, you are even more beautiful than i remember.

Aside from planning her own debut, she’s been riding high off her collaboration with Pitbull and J Balvin, “Hey Ma,” which they performed at the MTV Movie and TV Awards. She also performed her own set at Wango Tango this weekend and is scheduled for a gig at the Billboard Music Awards on Sunday, where she will doubt doubt perform “I Have Questions.”