Camila Cabello thought she was going to die the night before her debut solo album was released.
The 20-year-old singer, who first found fame as one-fifth of girl group Fifth Harmony, dropped her self-titled debut on 12 January (18) - to huge praise from critics and fans alike. But before finding out the positive reception to the record, Camila was wracked with nerves ahead of its release, so much so that she worked herself into a state as she waited for it to hit shelves.
Speaking to Zane Lowe in an interview for Apple Music's Beats 1 on Monday (15Jan17), Camila recalled that she was staying in a hotel in New York ready for album promo early the next day. She tried to have an early night, but the nerves got the better of her and she was still awake late into the evening.
"I could not sleep. My heart was beating so fast," she explained. "I would just try to go to sleep, and then I would just get my phone and I'd be like, 'Did it come out yet?'"
Camila's frenzied state of anticipation was taken to the next level when a housekeeper came into the hotel room to change her towels, with the Havana star unaware that the woman was a member of hotel staff and thinking her room had been broken into.
"I was trying to go to sleep and this lady came in, and she scared the bejeezus out of me," she recalled. "I was like about to go to sleep, and I thought that I was having a nightmare. She was like, 'Hello?' I was so scared. I was like, 'This is it. This is it. This is my last day and I didn't even get to see my album come out.'
"I'm not kidding. I was literally like, 'Oh my God. This is it, this is it' because I heard the furniture moving around, and I was like, 'Who's in the room?'"
Camila has earned huge success with her solo singles so far, including the much loved Havana. However, she told Zane that it was important to her to defy the critics and produce an album that surprised people.
"I never want to do what people expect me to do. I feel like it's uninteresting if I just came out with Havana part two and part three and my album was just a bunch of different versions of Havana," she explained.
