Demi Lovato reveals to ET Online the difficulty she had to go through because of her complicated relationship with her father, Patrick Lovato, who died of cancer in 2013.
In a recent video interview on her YouTube channel, the 23-year-old pop star admits she didn’t have a good relationship with her late dad whom she calls “abusive.” Despite of this, Demi wrote a song about him on her new album, Confident, appropriately titled “Father.”
“Father, I’m gonna say thank you/Even if I’m still hurt,” she sings. “I’m gonna say bless you/I wanna mean those words/Always wished you the best/I prayed for your peace/Even if you started this whole war in me.”
“I was very conflicted when he passed because he was abusive,” the recent SNL musical guest explains in a new behind-the-scenes video. “He was mean, but he wanted to be a good person… He wasn’t capable of raising a family, and it was because of his mental illness. To know that it wasn’t fully his fault really was saddening to me, and I wanted to write about it. I wanted to process it.”
Lovato, who struggles with a bipolar disorder herself, reveals that her father went through the same kind of struggle with mental illness. It was because of his disease, Lovato adds, that he couldn't really be there for his family in the way that he should have.
'But, at the end of the day, he's still my dad and I grew up with him and he was a wonderful person.' Demi then announced the launch of The Lovato Treatment Scholarship - inspired by her father's passing - to help people with mental illness pay for treatment.
These days, Demi claims she is more confident than ever with the release of her new album, which debuted last Friday.
Early in October, Lovato even posed fully nude and makeup-free in emotionally raw photos for Vanity Fair.
During the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards in late August, when ET caught up with the former Disney star, Demi stressed that she's more confident than she's ever been before.
“The album is called Confident,” she explained, “and I wanted something that was going to best represent the album title, where I’m at today and the music. I’ve never been more confident in my life and it was the perfect album title.”
Demi has had mental health issues - in 2010 and underwent rehabilitation for "physical and emotional" problems.
