Nikki Williams Talks Co-Writing Demi Lovato’s “Heart Attack!”

When Demi Lovato‘s glorious “Heart Attack” dropped a few weeks back, we were pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name in the song’s writing credits: Nikki Williams, the South African singer-songwriter signed to Island Def Jam/Chameleon Records who first made a splash with the smoldering “Kill, Fuck, Marry” before taking us to the dancefloor with her current single “Glowing,” a gleaming house smash.

“We wrote the song two years ago,” she explained. “The Halloween before last — I almost didn’t make it, because I wasn’t feeling so great from the night before, but I put on my tiara and went to the session. At the time I was going through some relationship stuff, and I was just so depressed, so when I got into the session I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna pour it all out there, and get it off my chest.”

“It’s a fun song,” she continued. “It’s about me being really scared to fall in love again after being rejected, after feeling so fragile and vulnerable all the time — thinking, I don’t know if I can do this ever again! I’m such a love addict, but I always fall in love with them in, like, one day.”

As for Demetria’s performance, Williams agreed with the critics and the charts that Lovato more than delivered: “She really put her own touch on it,” Williams said. “She’s got that signature wild note at the end, which I thought was so great. I know she could relate to it — I could tell by the way she sang it, and the emotion she put into it. I was pretty damn happy with the end result! It’s not the easiest song to sing, and she’s a really great vocalist.”