Lovato’s sensibility, maturity eased transition to ’tween star
Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2008
WASHINGTON — Demi Lovato, 15, bounces onstage at Six Flags America, microphone in hand. “How are you guys doing tonight ?” she asks her fans, who are mostly girls, and mostly just a couple of years younger than she is. They scream, cheer, wave their arms. “Wow, you guys are a fun crowd, not gonna lie !” More cheering. This is one of more than 50 concerts this summer for the Texas teenager who’s poised to become one more star in the Disney pantheon.
Born Demetria Devonne Lovato in Dallas, Demi has a big voice and a bigger smile, and exudes confidence in a loose black Pat Benatar T-shirt and black jeans. A pianist, guitarist and singer, she stars in Disney’s newest made-for-TV musical, Camp Rock, which recently premiered on the Disney Channel. It drew 8. 85 million viewers and ranked No. 1 among cable TV shows according to TV’s Nielsen Media Research. The movie’s soundtrack debuted last week at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 200 album list. “This Is Me,” her single with Joe Jonas of The Jonas Brothers, was No. 11 on the magazine’s singles chart.
Her first album of self-written songs comes out next year.
While it’s great that she has made it — her face will probably end up on a backpack this fall — it’s hard not to be reminded that the laws of physics are never more brutal than they are in ’tween popdom. She’s following a tried-and-true formula for fame, stepping in line behind Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera — all stars, all of whom got their start at the Mouse House, all eventually brushed by scandal. Demi is on a roller coaster that can take her very high, or stop and then plummet at a moment’s notice.
Demi got her start on Barney & Friends seven years ago, singing and dancing with the eponymous purple dinosaur. “Some people might think this is an overnight thing, but really it’s been about eight years in the making,” Demi says after the show in suburban Largo, Md.
Disney has marketed Camp Rock relentlessly. With High School Musical, the most successful Disney original movie ever produced, the hype more resembled a quiet storm. This time, the studio has truly grasped the power of preteens: a lucrative market that never gets tired of the same thing. Camp Rock merchandise, and a Camp Rock rock-a-long on the Disney Channel, are just two parts of a veritable hurricane of publicity.
Demi’s popularity is due in part to the long-haired, guitarslinging Jonas Brothers, her costars in Camp Rock. She will open for them on their 43-city Burning Up Tour, which begins Friday and ends in early September. Just as the brothers’ tour with Miley Cyrus launched them into pop-star orbit, so Demi has benefited from her association with them.
Demi’s stepfather, Eddie De La Garza, will be with her on that tour. At the Six Flags concert, De La Garza stands to the side of the stage, stern-faced and unreadable while she performs. But backstage, he is affable.
De La Garza quit his job as a Ford dealership manager to be Demi’s manager and travel with her. “We said when this all started that we’d keep our family values, and that’s what we’re doing,” he says.
Dianna De La Garza, Demi’s mother, is a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and country music singer. (“ I got my voice from her, ” Demi says. ) She and Demi’s two sisters, Dallas, 20, and Madison, 6, are packing for the family’s move to Los Angeles in the fall. Dianna De La Garza worries about her daughter but trusts her.
“I think I would worry more about the fame if I didn’t know Demi’s level of maturity when it comes to doing what she loves to do,” she said.
Demi does seem sensible. A Christian, she says a group prayer with her band before they perform. She sometimes wears on a chain around her neck a plain silver ring, inscribed with the words “True Love Waits.” (Then again, former Disney Mouseketeer Britney Spears made that same pledge years ago, when her own star was rising. And we probably don’t need to mention that Jamie Lynn Spears, 17, star of Nickelodeon’s Zooey 101, gave birth out-of-wedlock to a daughter June 19. )
Demi’s apparent maturity is born of experience in learning how to deal, as the kids say. In middle school, Demi says: “I went through a really hard time at school with girls bullying me. I blamed it on myself at the time, but looking back I guess it was out of jealousy.” One day, upset and frustrated, she called her mother and said, “I want home school.” The next week, they were out buying homeschooling materials.
“I’d gone through so much rejection at that point with girls at school that I couldn’t do acting anymore, where all I was doing was working hard and hearing ‘ no, ’” Demi remembers. “But then I started missing it, and once I got back into it that’s when things starting rolling. I think that’s because there was a new drive in it, there was more passion than there was before.”
She’s already adept at handling interviews. Talking about her experience with bullies, she gets serious, and the toothy grin disappears.
“There’s a point where you’ve gotta not care [what people think of you ], otherwise you put too much pressure on yourself and then you turn, like, crazy,” Demi says. “I’m not going out there saying I’m going to be perfect. The way I want to be a role model is not by not making mistakes..... What makes an impact on people is when you do something.”
In her business, public mistakes are seized upon, magnified, dissected on Web logs. Miley Cyrus, 15, star of Hannah Montana and icon of ’tween worship, was burned by her decision to sit for a Vanity Fair photo shoot in which her back was exposed, her torso covered by only a sheet.
But Demi hasn’t succumbed to temptation yet, at least with regard to those dreamy Jonas Brothers. She swears she doesn’t have a crush on any of them. “I think I’m, like, the only girl in America who doesn’t,” she says. “It’s kinda weird because you’re hanging out with your friends and all of a sudden there’s hundreds of girls screaming at them and you’re like... why ?”
The pressure of living a life under constant scrutiny does not discourage Demi, who says she was born for show business: “I knew from the second I stepped onstage. I was like, yep, this is what I want to do.”
Next year, The Princess Protection Program comes out, a movie Lovato filmed with best friend Selena Gomez, whom she met during auditions for Barney all those years ago. In the fall, Lovato begins filming for her new Disney series, Welcome to Mollywood. She seems to work nonstop, and the next few months, at least, will be no different.
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