“Cool for the Summer” is still one of Demi Lovato’s biggest bangers — and she recently revealed that her own life inspired the lyrics.
Lovato, 31, explained during an interview with Howard Stern that she wrote the song about hooking up with a woman before she publicly came out as bisexual. The relationship was “never public,” but the woman was also famous — though Lovato wouldn’t offer any further details about her identity.
When Stern, 69, asked whether the mystery paramour knows that “Cool for the Summer” is about her, Lovato said that she doesn’t. Because of her own current relationship, however, she has no plans to ID her ex. (Lovato has been dating Jutes since August 2022.)
“I’m in a relationship now and I feel like that would be inappropriate,” Lovato explained. “I missed the moment. Should’ve said it back then.”
“Cool for the Summer” — which peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is one of the tracks Lovato re-recorded for her Revamped album out this month — is about experimenting with a female lover and includes lyrics like, “Don’t be scared, ’cause I’m your body type / Just something that we wanna try.”
Two months after the song’s release, Lovato hinted that the lyrics were based on “personal experiences” from her own life. “I am not confirming and I’m definitely not denying,” she told British comedian Alan Carr in September 2015 when asked whether the track was about lesbianism. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with experimentation at all.”
In March 2021, Lovato said that she identifies as pansexual. “I’m so fluid now — and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was super closeted off,” she said during an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast. “I heard someone call the LGBTQIA+ community the ‘alphabet mafia,’ and I was like, ‘That’s it. That’s what I’m going with.’ I’m part of the alphabet mafia and proud.”
Lovato went on to explain that she realized she might be attracted to women while watching the 1999 movie Cruel Intentions — specifically the picnic scene featuring Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I like that,’” Lovato recalled. “But I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that’s very frowned upon. Any attraction I had to a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling.”
Lovato came out as nonbinary in May 2021 and started using they/them pronouns, but she decided to reincorporate she/her pronouns earlier this year because she was tired of trying to explain the concept of they/them to other people.
“It was absolutely exhausting,” she told GQ Spain in June. “That is one of the reasons that have led me to also feel comfortable with the feminine pronoun … I just got tired.”
