Reported by US Weekly: “Despite receiving anything but positive reviews, Heidi Montag’s debut single “Higher” reached No. 7 on the iTunes Top 10 pop chart.

“Looks like all the haters are also buying it!” The Hills star tells Us Weekly in its latest issue, on newsstands now.

But the negative responses – “Makes me feel uncontrollably ill,” “beyond pathetic,” and “the crappiest video I have ever seen” were just some of the comments posted on Usmagazine.com – humiliated Montag.

“I just started sobbing uncontrollably,” The Hills star tells Us.

“I cried myself to sleep that first night after my video came out,” she says. “I just couldn’t understand why people I didn’t even know felt the need to be so cruel and hurtful toward me.”

“I am just a 21-year-old from a small town in Colorado trying to follow her dreams,” Montag says.

Boyfriend Spencer Pratt, the director of the video, was there for support. “I just held her and told her it was going to be OK,” he tells Us. “This is just part of being an artist. If it were easy, everyone would be a pop star.”

Read more & watch the “failure” of a video after the jump.

How did the video concept come to be?

“We were at the beach and, literally, Spencer had his camera and a boom box in the trunk,” Montag recalls of the amateur shoot in October. “We did it in one take, maybe two, and it took us 20 minutes to film and cost us zero dollars.”

“We had other ideas but we couldn’t afford them,” Montag says.”

Hold on.. No money?? Here’s the video for those that might’ve missed it: