It’s almost been a year since Camila Cabello launched her album C, XOXO with her hyper-pop, left-of-center single “I Luv It.” At first, it was hated by many, but now, it’s becoming somewhat of a cult favorite. In a new interview with Dork Magazine Friday, Cabello admitted she felt “hurt” by the comparisons to Charli XCX and the negative reaction to the song when she dropped it.
At the time, some fans of Charli claimed that Cabello was trying to tap into Charli’s style as she started to roll out her own Brat era. Charli even fanned the flames by mimicking a video Cabello posted to “I Luv It” with her own “I Got It” in the background.
“It crushed me,” said Cabello, who admitted that she ended up spending a lot of time on social media. “I don’t know how other artists do it because the negative stuff really depresses me… It was a very weird, intense time, and I started dissociating, which has only happened very few times in my life.”
Many online users reacted negatively to the singer’s foray into an experimental sound starkly different from the radio-friendly sound of her hits “Señorita” and “Havana,” but she says she was simply “being myself” on the album.
“In the beginning. I was hurt and felt shitty about the reaction but I feel like I’m open to hearing positive things like that now,” she said, later adding, “I am still processing everything. Even if nobody liked it, I’d still love this record because I only did what felt great to me.”
“But knowing that other people have connected to this music does make me feel understood. I don’t know if I’ve had that before,” she continued. “The things I was writing about for this record are more complex, and there is more tension, which doesn’t always lend itself to easily palatable pop. Unless it’s a song like ‘I Luv It’, I guess. I do want to always push myself as a writer, though.”
Cabello, who’s set to hit the road on a new European tour, said that performing the songs at festivals last year “was everything to me.” She shared, “I’ve never felt like that before. It’s not a career move either; it’s a soul move… I know there are a lot of people excited about the tour, but really, it’s for me.”
While she was hurt by the early comparisons to Charli, Cabello celebrated the dominance of women artists in pop music, including Charli, Chappell Roan, and Olivia Rodrigo. “It’s been one of the most exciting times for girls in pop music,” she said. “We’re allowed to be more than the sexy vixen. We can be what women really are, which is complicated, layered and a lot of different things at once. Pop music is so much more interesting because of that.”
