Camila Cabello knows C,XOXO wasn’t her most universally beloved album, but she’s choosing to take her cues from where it counts: namely, personal heroes Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.
In a new Nylon cover story published Monday (Dec. 2), the 27-year-old “I Luv It” singer opened up about how the Eras Tour headliner and “Break My Soul” singer’s validation of her work sustained her when she felt like most people “misunderstood” her latest LP. “Oh, f–k, now I’m going to sound name-drop-y,” she told the publication. “But Beyoncé told me she loved my album, OK? That’s the gold star.”
“And I walked away fully, like, tears brimming in my eyes,” Cabello continued. “She’s somebody I’ve watched from my childhood. Her and Taylor saying nice things about the album really meant a lot to me. Anytime an artist that I respect has said something to me like, ‘Hey, I really love what you’re doing,’ it recharges my battery. A lot of the time I felt so misunderstood.”
The Cinderella star went on to say that people were “questioning [her] authenticity” throughout the C,XOXO rollout, something she thinks could be “because I’ve always been such a good girl.” “Being in the industry made me build that harder shell and harder exterior,” she added. “Like Rihanna, Beyoncé, Taylor — this kind of bravado happens in their later work. It’s building an armor. My previous albums were more clean-cut.”
Cabello’s fourth studio solo album dropped in June, debuting at No. 13 on the Billboard 200. From the beginning of its rollout, some critics tore into the vocalist’s exploration of other genres on the record — particularly C,XOXO‘s hyper-pop sensibilities, which some people wrote off as Charli XCX copycatting.
Of the comparisons to the “Von Dutch” musician, Cabello said, “People ran with this thing before the album was even out.”
“[Charli’s] one of my favorite artists, you know?” she continued. “[But] I can tell that people saying this weren’t even listening to the music. They didn’t do the reading. They didn’t do the listening.”
The “Havana” artist also gave an update on where she stands with former Fifth Harmony bandmate Normani, with whom she reunited at Paris Fashion Week in September to fans’ absolute delight. “With space, we can go back and tap into that,” Cabello said. “The past couple of times I’ve seen her, I say something and she laughs really hard. It doesn’t feel like we’re strangers. We’re getting back to the times when we [were] really close.”
See Cabello on the cover of Nylon and photos from the shoot below.
