Camila Cabello Finally Revealed Why She Left Fifth Harmony

Fifth Harmony has surprisingly been on everyone’s radar lately. In early 2024, rumors surfaced the girl group (who split in March 2018) would potentially reunite. That speculation hit new heights once their discography saw a new rise in streams — but alas, sources close to the former members denied a revival was in the works. Now, Camila Cabello has entered the chat. The singer recently reflected on her decision to leave the group in 2016, and the layered drama that followed it.

On Mar. 6, Cabello appeared on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. There, she revealed she found a new passion that seemingly distracted her from Fifth Harmony: songwriting. “I remember waking up on tour, going to my hotel room at 7 a.m., and getting on my GarageBand [to write] songs, because I didn’t want to do it while everybody was there,” she reflected. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I wanna write for other people.’ But then it turned into, ‘No, actually I want to sing these songs by myself.’”

Cabello then realized her desires no longer aligned with Fifth Harmony, and she distanced herself away from the group. “They were still really passionate and into that, but I was just like, ‘I’m not happy here anymore,’” she said.

In December 2016, Fifth Harmony announced Cabello quit the group on X (formerly known as Twitter). Though sudden, the remaining members at the time — Normani, Dinah Jane, Ally Brooke, and Lauren Jauregui — “wished Cabello well.”

Then, the split took a dramatic turn in 2017. That year, Fifth Harmony performed “Angel” at the MTV Video Music Awards, and infamously dissed Cabello with a stunt double. This shade didn’t sit right with many fans, including Cabello, who later addressed the incident in a January 2018 interview with The New York Times.

“It definitely hurt my feelings,” the “Señorita” singer said at the time. “I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t prepared for it — especially because at that point, I’d moved on from it. I was just like, ‘What? Why?’”

Elsewhere in the feature, she lifted the veil on her decision to quit the group. She explained she couldn’t artistically thrive while in Fifth Harmony, which sounds similar to her latest comment on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “I saw all these people around me making music, writing songs and being so free. I just wanted to do that and it did not work. It became clear that it was not possible to do solo stuff and be in the group at the same time,” she said.

Two months after Cabello’s interview, Fifth Harmony surprisingly announced they were going their separate ways. (Clearly, it was a rough two years being a Harmonizer.) Despite their messy conclusion, Cabello recently shared she’s on good terms with her former group members.

“I grew a lot in [Fifth Harmony],” she said on the Call Her Daddy podcast. “I feel like I can really focus on and remember the really joyful times.”