Demi Lovato dropped by Late Night with Seth Meyers to share how a fellow pop star helped inspire her new politically-charged track “Commander in Chief.”
“I was thinking about the music that’s out there right now, and I was like, ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about what’s happening?’ In the ’60s and ’70s, when anything political would happen, music was such a key element to help people process and get through it,” the pop star told host Seth Meyers. “So I was like, ‘You know, I really need to step up my lyrics and make it about something other than just my life.’
“So I started making more music that is less about me and more about the broad scope of what’s going on in the world, and one of the songs that we came up with was ‘Commander in Chief,'” Lovato explained. “And it was inspired by P!nk’s ‘Dear Mr. President.’ You know, back however many years ago that came out, and I wanted to do like a newer version.”
Back in Dec. 2006, P!nk released her open letter to then-president George W. Bush as the fifth single off her fourth studio album, I’m Not Dead. Collaborating with the Indigo Girls, the pop singer took aim at Bush and his administration on everything from the Iraq War and No Child Left Behind to opposing gay marriage, and the former president’s reported drinking and drug use during his college days at Yale and Harvard Business School.
While the protest song failed to chart on the Hot 100, it did find major success across the Atlantic at the time, becoming a Top 5 hit in countries like Germany, Switzerland and Australia and even peaking at No. 1 in Belgium and Austria.
Lovato, meanwhile, performed her thematic successor to the track for the first time at the 2020 Billboard Music Awards. It has since charted at No. 22 on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart.
Watch Lovato’s full interview with Meyers — including how she found out the results of the 2020 presidential election — below.
