Demi Lovato Finds Her True Voice

Demi Lovato has bravely taken on her demons and opened her heart for the world to see. Now, just 23, powered by her not-of-this-earth singing ability, she is poised to soar once and for all.

- Jesús Triviño Alarcón

SHE'S A SNAPCHAT QUEEN

Today: Demi Lovato’s makeup and eyebrow game is so strong and her lip-syncing so on point (doing Cher’s “Believe,” of course) that she could win RuPaul’s Drag Race without ever touching an elimination stage. She even has a heart-shaped mole! Alas, the whole visual effect is simply created by one of the app’s filters, which Lovato uses to contort her face as crazily as she pleases. “With Snapchat you don’t have to worry about it looking a certain way,” says the unfiltered Lovato, looking snug and comfy in an oversize yellow Moschino sweater and Clark Kent–style glasses at the Malibu home where she just completed her latest Latina cover shoot. “I have so much fun with the filters. I love it.”

Her cheeky Snapchat posts are a sideshow, of course. What she really wants to talk about is her serious embrace of music, which allows her to demonstrate more clearly than ever that the heavens blessed her with vocal cords of gold.

And everyone is noticing. “Lovatics,” her legion of fans, have been cheering her every step of the way; Rolling Stone praised the “powerful vocals” on her latest album, Confident; even Justin Timberlake, who certainly knew all about Lovato’s formidable talent, was bowled over by her performance at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in April. Yet the ever-growing popularity and accolades aren’t the be-all, end-all for Lovato. The objective is more fundamental: create music that matters.