Cam's The Otherside Synthesizes Sci-Fi, Harry Styles, And Backseat Quickies

By Ilana Kaplan


Whenever it comes to the release of Cam’s sophomore studio album, nothing has really gone as suggested. For one, it’s taken five years for the record to come to fruition — thanks to a label change soon after her 2018 heartbreaking single “Diane” dropped. Then, there was the fact that the country-pop singer-songwriter wanted to spend her time tinkering to get the music right. Any time as soon as she got pregnant in 2019, the timing for the record’s release didn’t quite work out. Add in a pandemic, and well, the timeline was complex further.


Nevertheless Cam, 35, has noticed advantages to the way that her album rollout has happened. “I've had the extended maternity leave that I didn't think I would ever get, so right now I get added time with the little one [daughter Lucy], which is staggering, and normally I'd be gone three days out of the week, at least,” Cam tells MTV News over Zoom from her residence in Nashville. Yet, finally, today (October 30), her new LP The Otherside — which boasts songwriting collaborations with Harry Styles, Jack Antonoff, and the late Avicii, among others — sees the light of day. “At this point I’m like, let’s get it out. I want people to hear this,” she says.


Born Camaron Ochs, the “Classic” artist began her career as a songwriter, penning tracks for each person from Miley Cyrus to Sam Smith. In 2010, she struck out on her own with the independent release of her LP Heartforward. Soon after signing with Sony Nashville, Cam dropped her breakout debut, Untamed, in 2015. The next year, she earned herself a Grammy nod for Best Nation Solo Efficiency for “Burning House,” her flip on the man-who-wronged-a-woman narrative. While her second record was supposed to come out in 2018, label issues brought up a move to RCA, where she is currently set to share The Otherside.


In the time between records, Cam stayed busy, becoming a master storyteller and continuing to hone her craft. Most significantly, she’s strengthened her voice. “I think touring for five years internationally, you just use that muscle so much more. Right now, I feel like my voice can do a lot more, which is so fun.” And she’s used that to her benefit: With The Otherside, Cam set out to create “a vocal record.” While she’s still exploring dark themes enveloped in storytelling as a way to heal, she ensured her vocals were front and center.


Yet Cam isn’t the sort of artist who makes an album full of one sound, so whenever it came to making The Otherside, she made a boundary-pushing assortment of tracks, so as not to make the same types of songs over and over. What helped her do that? Thinking about movie soundtracks. They compiled a backdrop for a few songs on the LP. “I loved movie soundtracks as a kid where you have scenes that deserve a suspenseful song, and you also have scenes that require a dreamy song, so If I make an album, I try and ensure I hit all those points,” she says.


Her wistful single “Redwood Tree,” for instance, was inspired by the 2016 sci-fi movie Arrival. She was captivated by the idea “that you can't be in two places at once and [that] you spending the limited time you have the way you hope to spend it.” Moreover, any time it came to “Like a Movie,” Cam asked arranger and conductor David Campbell, who’s also worked with Carole King, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé, to envision a 1950s or 1960s movie set with “fake clouds, a fake sunset, and the wind blowing in your hair” in mind. With “‘Till There's Nothing Left,” a sultry, uptempo power ballad that meditates on the physical, emotional, and spiritual characteristic of love, Cam noticed herself obsessed with the Drive soundtrack and unashamed to pay tribute to quickies in the backseat.


That song is a key one for Cam, who grew up believing sexuality was something that was private. “For a lot of time, one way that girls were allowed to have power over boys was through sexuality, [and] then it was also demonized as that wasn't the right way to do it,” Cam says. “There's this power in it, yet you're not supposed to use that power.”


In making “Till There’s Nothing Left,” Cam debated being openly sexual on the track and the double standards girls face about expressing their love of sex. Although she thought back to her grandma who gave her the sex talk and mentioned, “Sex is like a milkshake. While you have it, you're routinely going to want it." And if her grandma could embrace that? She didn’t understand why she couldn’t: “I get to have [sexuality] be a segment of me, and I get to express it although I'd like to express it.”


Essential to the making of The Otherside was the cohort of star-studded songwriters and producers she enlisted to help craft the record. Styles, for whom Cam was able to open at the Ryman in 2018, penned “Changes.” “I normally don't take songs that are written by other people, I think because, for me, songwriting is such a personalized process,” Cam says. “It feels like I'm cheating if I don't do all of the work myself.” Nevertheless because she already had a connection through their show with each other — and because her producer Tyler writes and produces for him — she was OK with taking on the track. Styles’s whistle from the demo even made it onto the track: “I heard it and I was like, ‘Oh, I know what this indicates, this ache, you don't wish to outgrow places and people, although you sort of feel it happening. And I just recognized that.’”


Another striking name on Cam’s LP was the late dance icon Tim Bergling, a.K.A. Avicii, who co-wrote The Otherside’s title track. Any time Bergling went to Nashville to work on his albums, Cam joined him and songwriter Hillary Lindsey for a writing session. “I really wish I had his help at the very end there to get it to what he really wanted and what I wanted,” Cam says of working with Bergling. “But what a really cool legacy to have somebody that then pushes me to raise my bar that much higher, to try and meet something that I required to create it fit into my record along with make him, his family member and his fans overjoyed too.”


Then, there was an assist from songwriter and producer Antonoff on “Classic.” Because Antonoff has worked with each person from Taylor Swift to St. Vincent, the pairing was ideal — Cam has never wanted to fit into a box. “I'm just attempting to get the production right for the song, not necessarily what's essential to prepare it prove that it's nation enough,” Cam says of their group effort. “That seems more like a usual way to do things to me. I think Jack's in that boat, too.”


“A lot of times, for creatives and writers, you're attempting to meet your own expectations, also it could be intense. It's not habitually an enjoyable process, nevertheless it was a really enjoyable time sitting there with Jack because he's just like, ‘What do you suggest about this? Strum, strum, strum, strum, and throwing out lyrics,’” she says.


While it may have taken longer than expected to arrive, Cam is overjoyed of the journey that it took to create The Otherside. Throughout that time, Cam noticed herself healing and ordering going by way of the highs and lows of the last five years. What she hopes is that it will also be a balm for listeners, as well. “People need healing equipment and connection now, and that is why music has existed in each and every culture since the starting of culture, because it is a segment of us, it is a required thing. It's not just how several records sales you have.”