Demi Lovato Explains Her Healing Tribute To ‘Father 

Demi Lovato Explains Her Healing Tribute To ‘Father’

Demi opened up about how the emotional tribute song helped the singer cope with her feelings about her father\'s passing.

album might’ve kicked off with the high-speed hookup anthem “Cool for the Summer,” but it’s her most emotional track that has everyone talking right now.

“Father,” the 11th song on the album, is arguably her most gut-wrenching number to date, chronicling the conflicting relationship she had with her father, Patrick Lovato, who passed away from cancer in 2013.

Here’s Why Demi Lovato\'s \'Father\' Is The Most Gut-Wrenching Tribute

In a candid new video the singer posted on Monday (Oct. 19) Demi opens up about what the song meant to her and how it helped her to “process” her mixed emotions about the loss of the man who had led a life of turmoil, and caused a lot of pain to his family along the way, thanks to his struggle with alcoholism.

“I was very conflicted when he passed because he was abusive,” Demi explains in the heartfelt discussion. “He was mean, but he wanted to be a good person. And he wanted to have his family, and when my mom married my stepdad, he still had this huge heart where he said, ‘I’m so glad that he’s taking care of you and doing the job that I wish I could do.\'”

Demi, who’d previously fleshed out her feelings about the then-living Mr. Lovato in her “For the Love of a Daughter” song on her third album,

, had a strained relationship with her biological father following her parents’ divorce when she was two years old. Her mother Diana later re-married, and her stepfather Eddie De La Garza stepped in to raise her.

For Demi, she now realizes that her father simply “wasn’t capable of raising a family,” and attributes that to the disease. “To know that it wasn’t really his fault really was saddening to me,” she said. “I wanted to write about it. I wanted to process it, and ‘Father’ really helped me do that.”

Many of Demi’s fans have found solace in her exceptionally personal story here and thanked her for opening up with it.

@ddlovato thank you so much for father and ftload they have helped me more than you could ever know

@ddlovato #DemiLovato Hardest thing in life that you learn growing up is seeing your parents flawed & human. #Confident & to the ♕

— James Bergquist (@burkvest) October 19, 2015

Clumsy, wavy-haired, and full of good intentions. Yep, that about sums it up.