Camila Cabello says making Familia was a way of 'giving joy' to herself after her mental health struggle

Click the play button below to listen to Tom Power's full conversation with Camila Cabello on The Q Interview podcast.

The Q Interview22:13How Camila Cabello found true happiness by going back to her Familia

Camila Cabello is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She started out in the girl group Fifth Harmony in 2012, went solo in 2016 and hit number 1 in 2017 with her massive single Havana. In this conversation, Cabello discussed something you almost never hear a pop star of her stature talk about — the day Havana hit number 1, she didn’t feel the happiness she thought she’d feel. Her new album is called Familia and, true to its name, it's about her coming home to her family, to her roots and to the music she listened to in the kitchen as a kid. She spoke about the real-life pressures of being a pop star, and how she realized prioritizing her own happiness is the key to her success.

Before recording her third and latest solo album, Familia, Camila Cabello said she struggled with anxiety and the pressures of success. But now, she's finally found joy in her music.

Inspired by the time she spent with her family in Miami during the pandemic, Familia draws heavily on Cabello's Mexican Cuban heritage by featuring Latin rhythms like salsa and mariachi. It's also her first album to include tracks in Spanish.

"I missed that time when I was little; I miss my culture that I get still in Miami. So I think that I was just, like, bringing that to myself," she told Q's Tom Power in an interview. "It was almost like my own medicine.… This whole process was me basically just giving joy to myself."

With number 1 songs like her 2017 breakthrough hit Havana, the pop star said she learned early on that success doesn't guarantee happiness.

"From the outside, I had, like, really successful songs," said Cabello. "[But] I was, like, severely burned out, had almost crippling anxiety to the point where I was just, like, not functioning. And that was all happening on the inside. So I think that really cemented it for me that I was like, 'I don't really care [about success] if I'm not happy, if I don't feel connected to my friends and community and the people around me.'"

After a particularly difficult year for her mental health, Cabello made the decision to prioritize her own happiness and explore what inspires and grounds her. She said if she hadn't found the process enjoyable, she would have just stopped.

"I was just like, 'What's going to make me happy?'" she told Power. "'Who do I want to work with that I trust? What kind of music would make me happy today? What kind of lyrics sounds interesting and weird? And how can I stretch myself in a way that makes me feel inspired and makes me look forward to, you know, coming to work tomorrow?'

"So it's all very selfish in a good way. And I think that that's what's made it, like, my best album — because it's not really me doing it for literally anybody else but me."

Written by Vivian Rashotte. Interview produced by Mitch Pollock.