Dancing With The Devil… The Art of Starting Over

Demi Lovato - Dancing With The Devil… The Art of Starting Over
Critic Score
Based on 14 reviews
2021 Ratings: #571 / 753
User Score
Based on 893 ratings
2021 Rank: #861
Liked by 59 people
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

100
The Telegraph

Mixing intimate ballads with upbeat club tracks, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over is the perfect contemporary pop artefact.

80
PopMatters

As she attempts to shed the weight of her past, Demi Lovato embraces every part of herself and creates some of her most unapologetic music to date on Dancing With the Devil.

80
NME
Powerful, purposeful and uncompromising, this is her definitive artistic statement to date. Demi Lovato is done pretending, and it really suits her.
80
Clash

An ambitious and hugely revealing journey into pop redemption.

80
The Independent
There’s no doubting the emotional authenticity of Lovato’s words and delivery. But the record is a long, mostly mid-tempo journey, which chugs along with melodies and easygoing arrangements that don’t reliably rise to the meet the challenge of the powerful story Lovato has to tell.
75
Consequence of Sound
She has fallen, hard, but continues to rise time and time again and remains a phoenix, perpetually guided by her greatest gift: her voice.
70
The Line of Best Fit

Dancing With the Devil is Lovato’s finest, and most cohesive, album to date, and it doesn’t need a plastered-on smile to prove it.

70
The Forty-Five
Its soft melodies and catchy hooks sometimes sit at odds with the demons bared, but Lovato’s personality remains intact throughout, a major win in light of her past.
65
Pitchfork
After an overdose nearly ended her life, Demi Lovato sings powerfully and directly about her past and who she wants to become.
60
musicOMH

This may all sound a bit too doomladen to listen to, but Lovato and her collaborators never lose sight of the fact that this is a pop album first and foremost.

60
AllMusic
Often, this blend of candid soul-baring and hyper-stylized pop can cause a bit of cognitive dissonance; the songs seem built to support emotions a bit frothier than what the lyrics detail.
60
Rolling Stone

Ultimately Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over delivers on the promise of the first half of its title, and skimps on the second. She’s been through hell, it’s clear. But her music isn’t clear about how she wants to begin again.

60
The Guardian
Lovato delivers lacerating lyrics about the trauma she’s faced since childhood, but the music is less startling.
60
Evening Standard
The music’s pleasant enough but if you want soul-baring you’re better off watching her documentary.
Case
60

“I don’t care if you’ve got a dick and I don’t care if you’ve got a WAP, I just want to love.” - Demi Lovato, 2021

I appreciate what she was trying to do with this album and I commend her for being open, but this album is just unfortunately too long and doesn’t have enough compelling songs to make this anything more than decent for me.

If this album was 10-12 tracks, it still wouldn’t be fantastic but it would be a much better experience, ... read more

marvelgaryen
68

Demi Lovato is an artist that has been lost for a very long time, actually since her debut she's been stuck in the same type of writing and production. But maybe this time, for real, she's discovering her own sound. She saw too much, lived too much, she experienced trauma heavily, her voice resonates all of that and yet her music used to reflect only her sorrow without TRUE self reflection.
In 'Dancing With The Devil... The Art of Starting Over' her poetic sense blossomed, apart from some ... read more

Maqtheus
60

Demi segue sendo a mesma e parece nunca expandir ou evoluir artisticamente.

56

Pretty forgettable honestly.

FilipeCarmona
100

This album is pretty grand and I do love an album that is quite full and tells a story and stuff that goes inside the mind. Demi comes out of her cocoon transforming herself into a beautiful butterfly. When you know all the deep dive, all the inside scoop in her story, what she went through, this album makes a whole lot of sense. It's a journey, there's a sensitivity behind every track, starting off real dark and growing into the light and comfort zone. It's a storytelling experience that ... read more

Sebas7ianic
82

No puedo creer que Demi haya hecho algo como esto, es realmente increíble como transformó el dolor, los vicios, la angustia en esta música tan bella. Me ha hecho sentir demasiado, es un proyecto muy sensato y fiel al retrato que Demi quiere darnos en las dos caras, lidiar con el 'diablo' y empezar desde cero. Las colaboraciones son geniales, la producción es brutal, vocales grandiosos. Un álbum muy digno y que recomiendo.

Purchasing Dancing With The Devil… The Art of Starting Over from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?
Become a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement

Year End Lists

#30/RIFF
Sign in to comment
2y
2y
2y
2y


Added on: March 15, 2021