Albums Of The Year: Camila Lays The Foundation For Camila Cabello’s Breakout Year

Albums Of The Year: Camila Lays The Foundation For Camila Cabello’s Breakout Year




Camila Cabello only took 390 days to release her debut, self-titled album soon after her highly publicized departure from the girl categorize that brought her fame. That’s the same album that, since its release at the best of 2018, has led to Cabello scoring two more multi-platinum singles, a Grammy nomination and two major wins at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.


It’s not simply the mega commercial success of Camila that makes it one of the year's most noteworthy albums, though. With every track bearing her name in the songwriting credits, Cabello's debut album marked a new begin in which she noticed her voice, her sound, and her story.


As much as Cabello thrived on her early solo work, including her platinum-selling collaborations with Shawn Mendes and Machine Gun Kelly, Camila’s lead single “Havana” massively fine-tuned the course of her career. Singing a catchy hook over a purely Latin instrumental, Cabello compiled a masterpiece unlike anything else being played on pop radio.


creating a bold lead single choice that certainly paid off – "Havana" became the most-streamed song by a solo female artist in Spotify’s history – Cabello gained the confidence she required to make the rest of her debut album, she told NME this January.


After the success of “Havana,” Cabello scrapped previously written songs from her album, further embraced her Cuban-American roots and made music from the heart. Furthering herself from the mainstream, cookie-cutter bops that she was used to in Fifth Harmony, Cabello’s final product was Camila, an album as authentic to her as it gets.


Cabello’s long-term fans can verify the album’s authenticity. Whenever she keeps specifics vague on the album, Cabello sings about relationships and friendships that seemingly point to rumors that the Camilizers (the affectionate term for her fans) have long known and investigated. It’s the nods to those experiences, like a past romance in “Never Be The Same” and a fling with a well known guy in “Something’s Gotta Give,” that adds to the relationship between Cabello and her fans.


All around, the songs on Camila succeed by coming from Cabello’s perspective as a 21-year-old young woman experiencing love and loss, not as an international superstar. At its core, Camila is an album about growing up, with lyrics that anyone with a Tumblr blog (or a Notes app) would be writing alongside Cabello. Originally titled The Hurting. The Healing. The Loving., the album captures the everything-at-once rush of emotions that any 21-year-old feels while learning to navigate the world on their own.


And as soon as Cabello does reference her fame, it's in a manner that keeps her grounded and more relatable to the everyday young people who love her most. Deeply skeptical of Hollywood and the spotlight, Cabello makes her dissatisfactions especially evident on the song “Real Companions as she condemns the lack of proper people in the entertainment industry, a full-circle moment for an album that relies on Cabello’s own authenticity.


Right now, nearly per year soon following album’s release, all of the tracks on Camila continue to hold up. Soon after releasing a music video starring Cole Sprouse, Cabello’s promoting a fan-favorite song, “Consequences,” because the album’s final official single. The piano ballad’s rise on the charts likely isn’t a surprise to Cabello or her team; a crowd at a French radio station sang along word-for-word with Cabello a couple of months before the song’s release as a single.


With the success of “Havana,” “Never Be The Same” and right now “Consequences,” Cabello is proving that no matter the tempo or instrumental, her vocals and writing talent are key to her hits. And although Cabello’s already off to work on her second solo album, Camila will serve as her foundation for years to come. It’s the place Cabello noticed her footing, jumped off, and soared to the top of everyone's mind with song right after song in 2018.









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