Songfacts®:

• Over pop-punk guitars and drums, Demi Lovato wails of the lack of meaningful relationships in today's society. The singer feels we've lost the substance of human connection and nothing is real anymore. "There's so much that's lacking substance, from the content that we intake to the activities we do in our normal lives," Lovato explained. "We're always on our phones, we're always on the internet and I wanted to make a song that was saying how I missed the substance that used to be the world we live in."
• Got high, it only left me lonely and loveless
  Don't wanna end up in a casket, head full of maggots
  
  In the first verse Demi sings of how she used opioids and cocaine to numb the pain of their emotional issues. They found drugs don't offer any escape from the world's problems. The singer goes on to say they don't want to suffer the same fate as their natural father, Patrick Lovato. An alcoholic who died of cancer, he lay dead for at least 10 days before he was found; his body was too decomposed to have an open casket.
• Demi Lovato wrote "Substance" with Nashville songwriter Laura Veltz, Toronto-based singer-rapper Jordan Jutes, and the track's producers Warren "Oak" Felder, Alex Niceforo and Keith Sorrells. Veltz, Felder, Niceforo and Sorrells all contributed to Lovato's previous track, "Skin Of My Teeth."
  
• The Cody Critcheloe-directed video pays homage to pop-punk music videos from the late 1990s and early 2000s. We see Lovato smashing a Gold certification award with a baseball bat and vandalizing a wall by spray painting the "Holy Fvck" album title onto it. It ends with a cameo appearance by reality star Paris Hilton.
• Demi Lovato debuted "Substance" on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, July 14, 2022. The song was released a day later.
• Demi Lovato wrote 'Substance" after thinking about how technology impacts relationships. "We had a really great time writing this song. I feel like we live in a world that lacks so much depth. Human connection. We're all connecting through social media. We won't see a friend for three years, but we'll be talking on social media all the time," they commented to Audacy's Check In. "That human connection is what we're missing. The content we intake is, like, trashy reality television. Where is the depth in this world?"