EpicThe wait is finally over.
Camila Cabello shocked fans when she quit Fifth Harmony in December and announced she was going solo. Collaborations with Cashmere Cat ("Love Incredible") and Pitbull and J Balvin ("Hey Ma") followed, and at midnight, she finally dropped her debut single, "Crying in the Club."
"You think that you'll die without him / You know that's a lie that you tell yourself / You fear that you lay alone forever now / Ain't true, ain't true, ain't true, no / So put your arms around me tonight / Let the music lift you up like you've never been so high / Open up your heart to me / Let the music lift you up like you've never been this free / 'Til you feel the sunrise," she sings. "Let the music warm your body like the heat of a thousand fires / The heat of a thousand fires."
"Ain't no crying in the club (hey, hey) / Let the beat carry your tears as they fall baby / Ain't no crying in the club (hey, hey) / With a little faith, your tears turn to ecstasy," Cabello croons in the chorus. "Ain't no crying in the club / Ain't no crying in the club / Ain't no crying in the club."
The song—off her album, The Hurting, the Healing, the Loving—was written by Benny Blanco, Cabello and Sia. Blanco produced the song with Matt Beckley, Cashmere Cat and Happy Perez.
The video was released hours later.
"I'm so excited to share the first music from my album The Hurting, the Healing, The Loving. This video summarizes the message of my journey over the past couple years, from darkness to light, from lost to found," the 20-year-old told Complex days before the song and video were released. "The director, Emil Nava, and I are put our hearts into this and we hope you like it!"
In a message to fans shared exclusively on Vevo, she wrote, "This video is really special for me. It has the first two songs 'I Have Questions' and "Crying in the Club" off of my upcoming album The Hurting, The Healing, The Loving. It was an incredible experience working with director Emil Nava. He understood my initial vision completely and took it to a whole other level with amazing visuals and made it look like what it felt like for me. I hope you love it as much as I do!"
Earlier in the week, Cabello told her 10.5 million Instagram followers what else they can expect from her solo endeavor. "The story behind the album starts with the second song that you'll hear called 'I have questions' which I started writing in a hotel bathroom on tour a little over a year ago," she wrote. "i was completely broken during that time, i was in the kind of pain that's uncomfortable to talk about, and it was the kind of chapter you never want to read out loud...i couldn't write another song for 6 months because writing meant i had to feel everything, and i wasn't ready to do that yet. so when i graduated from hotel bathrooms to studios to make my first album, i was making music about everything BUT what i was going through, it was like a secret burning on my tongue and for some reason i could not get myself to say it......."
Cabello will perform the song for the first time at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards. Afterward, she will treat fans to an encore performance of her new single "I Have Questions" exclusively for Xfinity X1 customers.
(Originally published on Thursday, May 18, 2017, at 9 p.m. PDT.)