Cam

One Liner: Pop country singer, more on the pop end now, with a great voice

Wikipedia Genre: Country pop
Home:  Huntington Beach, CA (but Nashville now)

Poster Position: 9
Both Weekends.

Sunday at 3:30 on the VRBO Stage.

Thoughts:  So weird.  I could have sworn she came here a few years ago.  She totally looks familiar, and I remember because she looks like someone that should be part of Lady Antebellum.  Swear I've done this before.  Oh well.

According to her bio (and I'm just not going to independently investigate this), her song "Burning House" "remains the highest selling song by a female country artist since its release."  Which brings to mind two things.  First, huh?  Seems like a very exact record to set.  Second, this is supposed to be country?  I would not have pegged this as country music.  But here is that mega-seller, with a whopping 116.5 million streams.

I mean, her voice is great.  Better than great - powerful and full and wonderful.  And she's very pretty.  I guess that sounds like country?  I mean, are we back to believing that TayTay is a country artist because her recent albums involved a guitar?  This sounds more like an Adele song or James Taylor or something.  I guess this is what "country pop" sounds like.  Also I hear the newer iteration of The Chicks in some of these songs.

Full name is Camaron Marvel Ochs (sounds like a superhero real name - wasn't that the bad guy in a Spiderman movie?), and she's from California.  She got her break writing tracks for Sam Smith and Miley Cyrus.  Maybe that is how she got on the bill here?  Her Wikipedia says that she had originally gone by her full name, until she found that people had trouble pronouncing the last name.  Since then, she has opened for diverse things like Harry Styles and Tim McGraw/Faith Hill.  Dang.  The music industry is harsh.  Wikipedia says she released 2018's Road to Happiness, which did not chart, and so she split with her label.  Damn.

"The Otherside" makes me think of Lady Gaga, a strong voice and more vibrato than is necessary will take me that way every time.  "Palace - Cover" gives me Jewel vibes during the chorus.  Okay, "Untamed" sounds like country.  But then "Hungover on Heartache" is right back to pop music.  This is weird to pigeon-hole.  

The album that I remember is Untamed, the 2015 album with a cover of her drinking a lemon through a straw and staring directly into the camera.  That one has the single up above on it.  No other song is nearly so popular, the closest is 11 million.  Only "Mayday" is also in her top ten from that album, so it has all been replaced.  Her newer album is 2020's Otherside, which mostly populates her top ten.  The big song from that is "Diane," with 15.9 million streams.

Has a Jolene feel to it, except from the other way around.  She's claiming that she didn't know he already had a wife when she hooked up with him.  But definite country vibes in that one.  Also, that dude is a dick.

She has a live album, from SXSW in 2015, and those sound very country in a way that most of this studio music does not.  Like, she has banjos in one of these songs.  Another one has her singing that she is "sweating like a pig," which doesn't match up at all with her glossy, Shirley-Temple-curls look now.  But then she ends the set with "Uptown Funk " of all things.  Nothing from these more recent two studio albums sounds anything so country as most of this.  However, the first single available on Spotify - "Down this Road" - for sure sounds like a Dixie Chicks thing.  Strong voices tune about a small town girl ready to face the world.

Her voice is great, but I don't think I'd ever aim for pop country.  Maybe I'd go do it if nothing else is great in her time slot, but this isn't my thing for sure.