Entertainment
Camila Cabello Opens Up About Being Head Over Heels For An Ex On “June Gloom”
The track just debuted during her live set at Rock In Rio Lisboa.
Camila Cabello is harnessing a blonder, friskier, and slightly more unhinged side of her personality for her upcoming fourth album C,XOXO, which drops June 28. (“This music feels like an unfiltered version of me,” she told NYLON.) But that doesn’t mean the woman who dreams in love songs and happy endings is completely gone, nor is the baggage from a previous high-profile relationship. Those complicated feelings seem to play a pivotal role in new album track “June Gloom,” which she debuted live during her set at Rock in Rio Lisboa on June 23.
The sparse, synth-driven, and sexy ballad recalls “Summertime Sadness” by Lana Del Rey, focusing on the darker side of the season, when not even high temps can’t distract you from a broken heart. “June gloom, June fog / I might as well say ‘Meet me in Montauk,’” its lyrics begin, before Cabello spells out the aforementioned meeting’s circumstances: “If she’s so amazing, why are you on this side of town? / If you like her so much, what are you here tryin’ to find out?”
Perched on a merry-go-round, she performed its sticky chorus, which poses a series of questions to the ex she’s meeting up with: “Does she get this wet for you, baby? / Talk to you in poems and songs, huh, baby? / Little kiss, make your head go hazy / Is it really love if it’s not that crazy?” The live performance, as Cabello told the crowd, was a fairly literal interpretation of how that moment played out IRL, and it gave a few hints as to who inspired the sensual lyrics.
The title comes from a “weather phenomenon” that “happens in certain parts of the world” where it gets so foggy that it feels “like you’re in a cloud,” Cabello explained. “One time, I had the always-brilliant idea of reconnecting with this ex, and we decided to take what was an innocent walk on this beach with a bottle of alcohol,” she continued. The timeline could align with Cabello’s on-again, off-again relationship with Shawn Mendes, especially considering how the two briefly reconnected in summer 2023 after calling it quits in 2021. They were even spotted in New York City together, miles away from Montauk.
The lyrics also reveal just how enamored Cabello was at the time, even if she was trying to play it cool. (“I know I act like it’s whatever / It just makes me feel better / The truth is, honey, you’re all I think about,” she confesses in the second verse.) But looking back now, the “I Luv It” singer said she doesn’t know if she was “more drunk off, honestly: him or the alcohol.”
In March, the 27-year-old confirmed that she briefly dated Mendes again last summer before realizing it wasn’t going to work out. “You’re just kind of like, it’s not a fit, it doesn’t feel right,” she told Alex Cooper on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “It took us both less time to be like, ‘This doesn’t feel right and we don’t need to try so hard to make it work. It’s all good.’” Although the vulnerable track doesn’t arrive on streaming until June 28, it already sounds like the perfect album closer in her carefree new era.
