Camila Cabello’s debut album dropped in all its wildly emotional glory last week, but Cabello almost didn’t live to see its arrival. Yep, seriously.

In a wide-ranging new interview on Beats 1, the singer told Zane Lowe that the night before her album release, she was staying in a New York City hotel and facing a 4 a.m. wakeup call the next morning. She decided to head to bed at a sensible time, but the excitement of the big day left her tossing and turning the entire night.

“My heart was beating so fast,” she said. “I would just try to go to sleep, and then I would just get my phone and I'd be like, ‘Did it come out yet?’”

In her restless state, an unexpected disturbance in her hotel room left Cabello thinking that she was in actual, life-or-death danger.

“I was trying to go to sleep and this lady came in, and she scared the bejeezus out of me," she said. “I thought that I was having a nightmare. She was like, ‘Hello?’ I was so scared. I was like, ‘This is it. This is it. This is my last day and I didn't even get to see my album come out.’”

Thankfully, the mysterious woman turned out to be a hotel housekeeper, and, as we all know by now, Cabello did indeed live to see Camila hit shelves. Great thing, too, because the album has earned rave reviews and hit No. 1 in 100 countries on iTunes. What a time to be alive (key word: alive).

Check out Cabello’s full interview with Lowe here, during which she reveals she wrote “In the Dark” about an unidentified famous guy and says she’d love to rework “Never Be the Same” into a country song with Sam Hunt.