After more than two years dating, Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes announced their split in November, and on Friday (Mar. 4), Cabello addressed the breakup publicly for the first time since.
The singer joined Zane Lowe to discuss her new single, “Bam Bam,” featuring Ed Sheeran, which features lyrics that are speculated to be about her relationship with Mendes. “I said I’d love you for life, but I just sold our house / We were kids at the start, I guess we’re grown-ups now / Couldn’t ever imagine even having doubts / But not everything works out,” she sings in the opening verse.
“My priorities have fluctuated and my focus has changed throughout my life. Those years that we were dating, I don’t even feel like, even while I was writing this album, and even still now, I guess, my focus is really on, how can I be a well-rounded person?” Cabello told Lowe upon reflecting on her relationship. “And apart from my career, my focus wasn’t even on my career. This album literally was a tool of me becoming a more well-rounded person and acquiring intimacy with my collaborators. That was my number one intention, was not even, how do I make the best album and the best music? My number one intention was, how can I just make music with people that I want to f—ing have dinner with afterwards? How can me talking about these things help me build trust with people? How can I talk about the icky things that I haven’t talked about with anybody and then get it to a place where these people, because they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I totally relate,’ can validate my own experience?”
She continued, “And same thing with those years that we were together. My focus was just, how can I live a happy life and be in a healthy, happy relationship? I was doing therapy a lot. My focus really has shifted. And even now while I’m in promo mode, honestly, if I’m not having fun, what’s the f—ing point? I think as I get older, yeah, the priorities shift. And I feel like that was that way for both of us. Because we both started so young too, we’re really learning how to be healthy adults. And that sometimes means not having your number one focus be your career. And that’s okay.”
As for “Bam Bam,” which dropped on Friday (Mar. 4) and is set to appear on Cabello’s upcoming album Familia, the “Havana” singer said that what she was “trying to get across in the verse is just that things change and things take really unexpected terms.”
“Because for me, I f—ing love Shawn,” she added. “And I feel like there is literally nothing but love for him. And this song is mostly just about like, ‘Okay, how do I make a song that shows the cycles of love, and life, and gives people…’ Whatever it is that’s going on in your life, whether it is a breakup, or a divorce, or like you said, a friend breakup, or you’ve just gone through something that just is really s—ty. Hopefully, this can make you be like, ‘It is that way now.’”