Fifth Harmony's Camila Cabello Announces Solo Album in Emotional Post

Source: Rolling Stones:

May 15, 2017 at 18:39

I started writing [the song] in a hotel bathroom on tour a little over a year ago

Former Fifth Harmony singer Camila Cabello announced her debut solo LP, The Hurting The Healing The Loving. In an emotional Instagram post, she called the album "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 will release the project's as-yet-untitled first single on Friday, May 19th. In the post, she implied that album opener "I Have Questions" will be the follow-up single, calling it "the second song that you'll hear." The vocalist wrote that she penned "I Have Questions" in a fragile state that wiped her out creatively and emotionally.

"I started writing [the song] in a hotel bathroom on tour a little over a year ago," she continued. "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 six months because writing meant I had to feel everything, and I wasn't ready to do that yet."

The 20-year-old singer added more elusive statements about the album's dark inspiration, which she described as "a secret burning on my tongue." However, in a separate post, she described the writing process like a humbling emotional exorcism: "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."

Cabello announced her departure from Third Harmony in December. Three months prior, the singer abruptly left the quintet's Missouri concert mid-show after suffering from anxiety – a condition she's battled in the past.

"I was having terrible anxiety, nonstop," Cabello told Billboard in 2015. "My heart would beat really fast the whole day. Two hours after I woke up, I'd need a nap because my body was so hyperactive. It was so eff – sorry, but it was so fucked up. I was scared of what would happen to me, of the things my brain might tell me. I realized the stuff I thought was important isn't worth my health. Now I write in a diary every day, work out and meditate."

Cabello technically began her solo career during her tenure in Fifth Harmony, releasing the Shawn Mendes duet "I Know What You Did Last Summer" in November 2015. Since then, she's teamed with rapper Machine Gun Kelly on "Bad Things," collaborated with DJ Cashmere Cat on "Love Incredible" and joined Pitbull for "Hey Ma" from The Fate of the Furious Soundtrack.