Demi Lovato Has Loved Metal Music Since She Was 14

When Demi Lovato was just 14, her boyfriend at the time turned her on to metal music, introducing her to bands like Job for a Cowboy and Dimmu Borgir.

“The reason why I had this love for it is because metal music — the vocalists do things with their voices that I can’t do,” Demi shared with Jose Mangin on his Metal Ambassador podcast. “And I can do a lot with my voice, but I cannot do that.”

Listen to Demi’s full Metal Ambassador interview on the SiriusXM App

Demi added, “Everybody is shredding in the band, and I just had this affinity for it where I was like in awe of the music.”

This boyfriend was also the one who took her to a Dimmu Borgir and Unearth show. “I was 14 at that show,” Demi recalled, “and I was probably about 90 pounds. And I decided to go into the middle of the crowd … and all of a sudden, people start moshing. Like, really moshing. And I had been in pits before that weren’t as intense, but this was so intense, and I was like, ‘I gotta get out of here.’”

She jumped up and crowd-surfed to the front of the stage, and, even though she lost a shoe, it was a great first experience. “My neck was sore from head-banging the next day,” she reminisced with a smile.

Demi also shared her love for the Arizona band Job for a Cowboy. “‘Entombment of a Machine’ is what started me on Job for a Cowboy,” she said. “Just, like, the guitar riffs, the scream in that song when it hits really hard — it was the first song that I realized metal music in a way can be catchy without being a pop song.”

Demi — who’s currently re-releasing rock versions of her past pop hits like “Heart Attack,” “Cool for the Summer,” and “Sorry Not Sorry” — shared that she’s hoping to one day collaborate with Knocked Loose and Corey Taylor of Slipknot. She also did her very best metal pig squeal for the Metal Ambassador podcast.