Camila Cabello hit the music scene back in 2018 with her self-titled debut album, which has sold nearly 1 million copies. Since then, she’s released various singles to boost her sophomore effort, Romance. In fact, Cabello teased fans with early releases of songs such as the uber-popular “Señorita” (with Shawn Mendes, which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100) as well as this most recent effort, “Living Proof.”
Supported by a choir and a Cabello’s wide vocal range, “Living Proof” is sensual to its core. Cabello is doing what many artists have done before: lacing emotional and physical intimacy with references to spirituality.
Right from the beginning, Cabello focuses on intimacy with current boyfriend and frequent collaborator, Shawn Mendes (Mind you, Cabello never says Mendes’ name in the track, but she’s talked at length about their newfound romance as inspiration for her album).
Cabello asks her lover to speak to her not with words, but with physical actions (“Tell me something, but say it with your hands, slow/When you touch me, paint me like a Van Gogh/The way your hands can shake me/Soft to the touch like, baby”).
Cabello mimics the efforts of her lover in the same way: “I wanna study every inch of you/’Til you trust me to make the angles come through/Like a choir singing ‘Hallelujah’/When my body’s crashin’ right into you.”
And as the physical and emotional intimacy increase (“Count the freckles, as they run down your spine/Show your demons, and I might show you mine”) Camila believes that she and her lover are experiencing a small taste of the divine (“When we align, ooh yea…/Ooh, there’s God in every move…/What a design, yeah, yeah, I wanna dive in/What a divine moment”).
When the video for “Living Proof” debuted, Cabello tweeted that she loved pretending to be “a fairy nymph” for it. And Cabello’s nymph, like many mythological inspirations, doesn’t bother much with modesty.
Cabello sports a few looks throughout, each showing more skin than before. She lounges in a see-through green dress in the water (in which viewers can briefly glimpse her nipples). She later dons a form-fitting silk gown, and the camera takes time to focus on her bra as random hands caress her body. Oh, she also dances and cozies up with a shirtless man in various scenes. It’s quite a sultry three minutes. If you’re looking for something to compare it to, the video shares a similar vibe to that of Ariana Grande’s “God Is A Woman,” but with more of a romantic feel.
In a clip on her Instagram feed, Cabello said of the song (and video) that it’s: “really about just being intimate with the person you’re in love with and how beautiful and divine and otherworldly that can feel.”
And while that may be true, that intimacy is put on full display both sonically and visually here, taking private moments and making them very public.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
