Although Camila Cabello warned the world that her voice was shot and she might butcher some lyrics, she transitioned through a game of ELLE's Song Association seamlessly.
As one of ELLE's Women in Music cover stars, she was tasked with singing a song that contains a word given by ELLE.com in 10 seconds. Her musical sensibilities proved diverse. When posed with the word, "Inside," she belts "Emotions," by Mariah Carey. Next came "Candy Shop" by 50 Cent. The only word she tripped up on was "Spicy," although she recovered with tunes from Justin Bieber and Céline Dion.
When it came time to musically associate the word "Better," some assumed she'd go with boyfriend Shawn Mendes' 2016 song, "Treat You Better." Instead, she sang Khalid's 2019 hit. However, she did manage to incorporate her Billboard chart-topping single with Mendes by sillily singing "Señorita."
When ELLE asked about her steamy duet with Mendes, she initially said the two couldn't agree on when to record the song—if at all. "I didn't want to do it, and then a few months later, I couldn't get the song out of my head," Cabello told ELLE. "I [ finally] told (Mendes), 'I think we should do this.' He was like, 'I don't want to do it anymore.' It went back and forth for, like, eight months. Then we finally went into the studio and reworked it so we both felt good about it, without any pressure. I love working with him so much."
