Camila Cabello Faces Her Anxiety, Finds Closure With Fifth Harmony on ‘Psycho Freak’

Camila Cabello wears her heart on her sleeve and faces the scar tissue of her past on “Psycho Freak.” The Familia track, which features haunting vocals from Willow, paints a picture of the Cuban-Mexican singer’s anxiety as she shares her truth in a vulnerable way. She dropped the song on Thursday at midnight, with the video premiere set for Friday morning.

“Sometimes I don’t trust the way I feel/On my Instagram talkin’ bout ‘I’m healed’/Worryin’ if I still got sex appeal/Hopin’ that I don’t drive off this hill,” she sings in the first verse.

On the song’s second verse, she addresses her dramatic departure from Fifth Harmony, and seems to bury the hatchet about the fiery back-and-forth the group had after announcing her exit in 2016. “Everybody says they miss the old me/I been on this ride since I was 15,” she sings. “I don’t blame the girls for how it went down, down.” 

The brief lyric, which seems to make reference to Fifth Harmony’s first single as a foursome, “Down,” appears to provide some closure for Cabello and for the group’s fans, who still have more questions than answers about her departure from the girl group. “We have been like supportive of each other through like DMs and stuff,” she told Reuters about the track earlier this week. “I’m like in a really good place with them.”

As a whole, Cabello explained that the song is about “all of the different things that have made up my journey with anxiety and starting off really young in the industry,” she said.

Cabello first teased the release of the single by posting a photo of herself — sporting a mullet — alongside Willow earlier this week. “Pleasure to collaborate with somebody I respect so much as an artist and as a person,” Cabello wrote at the time. “@willowsmith let’s get it.”

On Friday, Cabello also released the rest of her album Familia, which includes singles “Don’t Go Yet” and “Bam Bam” featuring Ed Sheeran. Cabello brought the world of Familia to TikTok as she performed the album’s tracks in an immersive TikTok Live (similar to Rosalía’s) with mariachi-inspired costumes and addictive choreography.