Songfacts®:

• "Psychofreak" chronicles Camila Cabello's mental health struggles since starting out as a 15-year-old with the girl group Fifth Harmony.
  
  House in the hills is a house of cards
  Blink and the fairytale falls apart
  Sorry, didn't mean to get so dark
  Maybe I'm an alien, Earth is hard
  
  "That song is basically about anxiety and all of the different things that have made up my journey with anxiety," Cabello told Reuters, "and starting off really young in the industry."
• After getting her start with Fifth Harmony, Cabello abruptly departed the lineup in 2016 to pursue a solo career. Her unexpected exit came amid talk of tension between her and the other four members. Here, she references her split from the girl group.
  
  Everybody says they miss the old me
  I been on this ride since I was 15
  I don't blame the girls for how it went down, down
  
  Cabello's relationship with the other girls is better now. "We have been, like, supportive of each other through like DMs and stuff," she said. "I'm, like, in a really good place with them."
  
  The repetition of the word "down" is a reference to Fifth Harmony's first single after her departure, "Down."
• Cabello subtly references her breakup from boyfriend Shawn Mendes. The two split in November 2021 after a year-and-a-half together.
  
  Tell me that you love me, are you lying?
  Give me lemonade, I give you limes
  
  The singer hints here her trust issues may have been a factor in ending their romance. Camila told Elle Mexico that on "Psychofreak" she sings about "the craziest and deepest thoughts I have when it comes to being in a relationship with someone... I bare my soul."
• Cabello recorded the song for Familia. "Psychofreak" was the hardest track on the album for her to write. "It felt so vulnerable to be talking about those things at the time," she revealed to Audacy's Julia. "I had been working through a lot of those thoughts, like paranoia and intimacy issues. It was the first time I really put those specifically in a song."
• Willow provides guest vocals, singing about her failure to open herself up to love from a partner. Cabello enjoyed just being a music fan as she watched the "Transparent Soul" singer record her part. "Getting to see her on the studio was like amazing, all these kind of like background vocals, these parts that she wrote for this song," she told ET Canada. "I got to see her on her element, just headphones on, mic, just doin' it, that's so sick."
• Cabello and Willow wrote the song with the singer's "Bam Bam" collaborators Ricky Reed and Scott Harris, plus Tom Peyton (Meghan Trainor's "Me Too," Panic at the Disco's "Say Amen").
  
  While writing "Psychofreak" in the studio, Cabello felt very anxious and vulnerable and improvised a lyric. "It's me kind of singing anything that I think about and feel into a microphone," she explained. "I do like seven takes of that. I do that for like 25 minutes, and then me and my collaborators talk about it. Then we are like, 'Oh, you said this, that was really cool.' We brainstorm, we fill it in and then that becomes a song."
  
  Cabello added the process proved to be a cathartic experience for her.
• Ricky Reed and Tom Peyton produced the trippy electropop track. They created a haunting vibe to augment Cabello's vulnerable vocals.
• Willow Smith joined Camila Cabello for the live debut of "Psychofreak" on the April 9, 2022 episode of Saturday Night Live. Cabello also performed "Bam Bam" on the show.
• Cabello felt it was important to keep the line referencing her Fifth Harmony departure because it was such a big part of her journey as a person. "It just explains so much of how I got to where I am now, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and I'm sure for everyone else in the group, too," she told Cosmopolitan magazine. "I felt like it was important because I don't really ever talk about that in any of my songs."