Cara Delevingne says new music was inspired by getting sober

Cara Delevingne says her debut songs are inspired by getting sober and mental health challenges she has faced.

The 33-year-old is known all over the world for her modelling work, and has also acted in major productions including Suicide Squad and Only Murders in the Building.

Now she’s moved into the world of music, with her first two songs, I Forgot and Out of My Head, released last Friday.

Delevingne told BBC Radio 1 presenter Jack Saunders the second track was based on the idea of “everyone talking and no-one really listening or saying the truth”.

Speaking on the New Music Show, Delevingne said Out of My Head was inspired by her first year of sobriety, and the “internal conflict and disassociation and all that fun stuff” she experienced at the time.

“We changed the chorus to ‘out of my head’ because I think that’s something I have to do every day to get out of my overthinking,” she said.

With her other track, I Forgot, she said she “wanted to make a song that could touch on the landscape of what mental health is like sometimes and how hard it can be and how raw it can feel”.

The London-born star revealed the desire behind it came from wanting to create a song which she could “absolutely just lose it to”.

“I think as an English person, I was never very good at dealing with anger, and so this is the healthiest way I’ve found to release all of that and to express those emotions.”

Delevingne has previously spoken about struggling with depression and how she became “very good at disassociating from emotion completely”.

She has also opened up about battling addiction, and how the 12-step treatment programme has helped her.

‘I am a person, I’m flawed’

Delevingne said she has used humour and being self-deprecating in the past but had to learn to take herself more seriously when it came to music, knowing that people will have preconceived ideas about her.

“I wanted it to feel like me as a person was breaking through that, and try my best to be like: ‘I am a person, I’m flawed and I’m a human and we all have pain and suffering, but music can be the one connector of that’,” she said.

The cinematic, seven-minute music video for both tracks is directed by Jessica Lee Gagné, who was a lead cinematographer on the psychological thriller series Severance.

As it opens with I Forgot, Delevingne can be seen falling through the sky, before the setting is revealed to be a film set with crew and dancers.

The second half sees her walking through a forest before the staging shifts to an office.

Delevingne said Gagné had originally declined the job due to being too busy, but agreed after listening to the music as she “resonated with it”.

“She is undeniably a visionary in so many different ways,” Delevingne said.

“A lot of the music I wanted to make, coming from doing movies, felt to me like it was very cinematic.

“So to be able to pair it with something like this has been a dream come true.”

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