Beyoncé collaborator and singer/songwriter Cam takes a deepdive through the pivotal songs in her life with Laura David.
There's few people in the country songwriting game right now who have been as prolific or as successful as Camaron Ochs.
Raised in California with her sights quickly setting on a life in music, Ochs built up a catalogue of her own records and, alongside it, a series of high-impact credits writing for others. She placed cuts this way with Miley Cyrus and Sam Smith, but her biggest breakout moment came in 2024, when she was a major featured writer on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.
Tracks including the now-viral “TYRANT”, “DAUGHTER”, “AMERIICAN REQUIEM” (Ochs is a self-proclaimed requiem lover), and more were all a product of her work in the Cowboy Carter sessions, all of which happened years before confirmation of the album's existence.
Now, Ochs – better known mononymously as Cam – is back to build on that momentum, gearing up for the release of her new solo record, All Things Light. It’s the first Cam record in five years, a period in which she lived through both global and personal upheaval. The world, for one thing, was shut down in a pandemic. And she herself became a new mum, an experience that was simultaneously incredibly rewarding and incredibly isolating.
“I’m a really communal person. I don’t really like being alone. I like resting by myself, but I kind of lean on other people a lot,” she tells me. Part of how she got through that time, she explains, was being in the studio. The output of that period is both what’s now set to appear on All Things Light and what she brought to the table for Cowboy Carter.
“All my songs come from the same place. I only have one source. I’m not really good at switching voices, but I think what I do is that I try really hard to go in feelings wise, using my gut and the feeling of what lights something up in me. Whatever that is, is the thing I should pursue. I keep calling it divine timing, that the stuff I was working on that went to Cowboy Carter was the same time that I was doing stuff for this album,” Ochs explains.
“It doesn’t really feel like two separate things. It just feels like: ‘Oh, it’s time to go ice fishing!’ You go down and sometimes you don’t get anything and sometimes you do. It’s like that quote: ‘I hate to write, but I love having written.’ That’s kind of how I feel.”
Even Ochs' song choices come from that same well of inner knowing. What guides her musically - whether in her own personal tastes or her external output - is being in touch with what inspires and moves her. Her selections, she explains, is a signpost of the most important markers of her life.
She thought back to the music that soundtracked her fondest and most pivotal memories - watching her family dance to certain songs, getting excited by the musical possibilities of others - that when put together provided almost a mission statement of who she is and where she has been.
“I remember associating certain songs with different people in my family growing up and how they would light up when a certain song came on,” Ochs says. “As a little kid, I took it in really deeply. It might have been a hard day at work, but everyone would come home and dance to a certain song.
“I think I started to understand for myself what music did as a human, both for myself and for others. It lights up the best parts of my favourite people.”
“I’ll Follow The Sun” by The Beatles
Cam: There are early memories for me with this. I remember when I was at daycare, they asked me what my favourite song was and I said “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” because that was the first song I knew, but this song was the first real favourite song I knew.
I can picture myself being five and knowing all the words to this and being in front of my parents’ dresser in my bedroom singing it to myself. I loved this melody and how it worked without really even knowing what a melody was. Something about it clicked and my little brain was like, I gotta know it. It’s funny now, having a five-year-old and thinking about the stuff like that she’s learning.
BEST FIT: Do you listen to this song with her now?
No, she’s kind of in this CoComelon phase. There’s also Chappell Roan, and thank goodness. That’s a hit with the kids, actually. The other day she was even singing it in her sleep.
Oh my god, that’s so funny. As for The Beatles, did you end up a lifelong fan after loving this song?
I would say this is really indicative of how the first part of my life went. I really listened to what my parents listened to, and my grandparents listened to, and my parents loved The Beatles. My dad was more into that kind of 60s/70s psych rock, and my mom was more into the pop and folk stuff, but they both definitely loved The Beatles. I kind of like that earlier Beatles stuff, the Rubber Soul of it all.
“Sentimental Journey” by Doris Day
So this song was my grandparents. My maternal grandparents were a big part of my upbringing and they both listened to a lot of 30s’, 40s’ and 50s’ music that I would listen to with them.
My grandpa would play this song on piano. He wasn’t really like a piano player piano player, but he would do it to tell stories. He would make a big show of it, sitting down at the piano and emphasising the plunky “boom, boom, boom, boom.” It was hilarious.
For some reason you just couldn’t stop watching him and singing with him. My grandmother loved the song too, so she would sing along. She had an alto singing voice, and she was also a smoker, so she would sing, and it was all really, really low.
I remember everyone being so happy sitting around singing this song, what a kick we got out of it, how funny it was. I’ve been singing it my whole life, and I sang it at my grandmother’s funeral. It was just a full story thread. It has such great little lyrics, like I’m about to head somewhere. There’s something so poetic about that.
Would you say those early memories with your grandparents were foundational in getting you into music?
Yes, in the sense that everybody’s love of music around me tipped me off that this is kind of magic and people get to be this brighter version of themselves when they’re listening to music or making music. And then my grandpa taught me piano. I didn’t have a lot of piano lessons, but he actually made it into something that was way more narrative driven for me.
He would be like, ‘Okay, so here is home base, the root chord, like a C. Then, as you start moving away, do you see how this feels? Oh, we’re getting lost a little bit! Are we gonna make it home? I don’t know if we’re gonna make it home…’
He was also a very large person, so he would make it a very loud thing. It sounds really intense, but as a kid you’re just in awe of this really good storyteller. Finally, he would play something that was tension-y enough and then resolve, which is most of Western songwriting. A lot of that - in country too - is this pull and this tension and then this resolve and the ‘We made it home. We ended the journey.’
That was a first step from music that I was listening to that were records and then music that someone was making, like he was making the story on the piano with nothing else. Those were pretty foundational components.
“Ergen Deda” by The Bulgarian Voices
“Ergen Deda” comes from a Bulgarian women’s choir. I sang this in a children’s choir that I got into, which was probably the next step of me really knowing music. I was learning. My ear was getting trained in the shapes and the structures of harmonies and things.
The children’s choir way was you’d learn choral, religious stuff and then you’d learn a different language. We sang in, like, 14 different languages by the time I graduated high school, and this was one of them.
I can’t even remember what this one’s about, but there are all these seconds in it that are really dissonant. I was like, What is this? At first you might not understand, but for us as kids it was so fun and such a tickle to sing. You’re standing next to someone singing something that’s so dissonant, which was cool. That was my next step into understanding.
I was in one of those school choirs, too. It was Anglican so we did those choral religious things, especially around the holidays. Some of those Medieval songs especially can be so weird to wrap your head around, but when it clicks, it really clicks.
The choral stuff is so good for you, my entire social media is this. It’s like, you breathe together, your heartbeats align. It’s so good for community and for your well-being. I miss that a lot.
Of all the choir songs you sang, why did you pick this one?
This was just the coolest one. It was between this and Verdi’s Requiem which we sang in Rome, actually we even sang a song for the Pope. That was where my initial obsession with requiems began, which is foreshadowing some of my later work.
All the choral stuff I love. But there’s something about “Ergen Deda” that I think is almost like a party trick. That song is also in ⅞, which is such a weird meter, and the first verse of my song “Burning House” is in ⅞, which is one of my favourite songs. You know, you don’t purposely think, “I want to write something like “Ergen Deda”’ but these songs kind of end up lodging themselves in your mind or your heart.
“Ghost” by Indigo Girls
I was at choir camp, and I remember that you could prepare something for evening campfire. And a friend of mine was like, ‘Oh, we should sing “Ghost.”’ I had never heard this song, and I was like, Holy fuck, these harmonies are insane. It’s just so emotional. I can’t do justice to describe what they do, but it’s something about how personal and emotional and universal it is at the same time, that just unlocked something in me.
I obviously wasn’t in high school at the time they had their peak, so I had their retrospective album that I found, and I kept it in my car. That was the first time I felt like it wasn’t my parents’ or grandparents’ music, but was actually my music. I found Indigo Girls and was like, Oh my God, I can build my own identity. That kind of folk was so perfect for how I wanted to express myself, so I started writing my own, although I’d be really quiet and embarrassed in my room.
I went to a few of their concerts, and I remember at The Berkeley Greek I was with my parents and my sister, and we were walking through the parking lot as they were exiting the bus. There was no security, and they were walking super close to us. My mom was like, “Go tell them what they mean to you.” I was like, “No, not like this, not in a parking lot.”
But it’s so crazy how it all works out, because after putting up “Burning House”, Emily tweeted at me, and we became pals. We hung out and wrote together, she bought me a present when I was postpartum with my kid and I cried. It was like a baby towel, and I was just crying. She sang at one of my shows, we did ACL last November, I showed her this whole album before it was starting to come out.
At one point she was like, “I feel like we really get along.” And I was like, “You made me.” I’m like, of course we get along, because I want to be you! And Amy, too. The two of them are so fun.
I feel like every brush with the Indigo Girls is awesome. I remember Emily also popped up at Katie Gavin’s solo show in New York in December, one that I went to. She seems like such a supportive and kind person, and it’s so nice that they’re having another moment.
She’s just the best. Emily is so supportive. She could just be like, ‘Peace out!’ She’s earned a fucking break. But still, she’s so excited, she wants to come.
It’s funny though, because my manager told me a little while ago that same thing, about the Indigo Girls having a moment again. But to me, they never left. The moment goes forever for me.
“If You Want Me to Stay” by Sly & The Family Stone
This was one my mom loved. My dad too, but my mom really loves Sly & The Family Stone. I remember coming home from college at some point, my parents and sister had moved into a new house, and I remember thinking I wanted to have a light up moment with everybody, and I would turn this on and we would all dance. It was just the best. What an instant, happy memory.
Whenever I think about how to make an album - which is so open ended - you always want to have all the feelings, which is my Indigo Girls side. And then I’m like, ‘Okay, I need one or two dancing numbers, something up tempo.’
I don’t ever want it to feel like you have to have up tempo because the label or whatever said, you want to have it because it actually makes people get up and dance. That probably is related to this type of memory.
Plus, I just love bass lines. Who doesn’t love a really, really good bass line?!
“Mahler: Symphony No. 5 - IV. Adagietto” by Leonard Bernstein NY Philharmonic version
When I discovered Mahler, I was like, Whoa. Feelings. Especially this specific sound when you’re hearing this - I feel like everybody’s into this. Well, maybe not everyone. But Adagietto No. 5 is like someone’s painting with bright colours in the dark, but also they’re painting slow, and it’s just the best.
Anything that makes me feel warm and dark is my favourite. Probably womb-esque. I remember someone described Mahler as feelings-oriented, as opposed to a Mozart or Bach, who are more regimented.
On top of it, this is the Leonard Bernstein version. And he did West Side Story. I am obsessed with West Side Story. There’s all this tension and the thoughtfulness that went into those intervals.
To hear Bernstein now bringing this very feelings-oriented Mahler piece into current-ish times was amazing. I’ll always be behind that song being played at any place or any time.
“Which Side Are You On” by The Weavers
This one is a representative song. I remember when I was in college and I didn’t know anyone who was a musician, because I grew up around people who were like, ‘It’s too hard to be a musician. You can’t afford to live.’ So, no one I knew was a musician until I got to college.
Then I met my roommate, who ended up becoming my best friend, and my boyfriend, who ended up being my other best friend. He was the first musician I ever met, like the first true songwriter besides a dad playing in a band.
The two of them grew up in a very conservative small town. He was a Deconstructed Christian, and she was very liberal. Her dad was the only environmentalist in a very small farming town. So, they were very liberal. And I remember he was writing songs that weren’t quite protest songs but songs with a message.
I remember my friend being like, ‘What’s the point of writing if you don’t have something to say?’ That made me uncomfortable when she first said that, because I was sometimes just making sounds that feel nice. But that stuck with me, because I always wanted the purposeful songwriting and the feeling, sonics of it, all to fit. A lot of it ended up being more personal than anthemic, but this type of song was representative for me.
There’s something so strong about saying, ‘I want to write something like The Weavers.’ There’s no beating around the bush. This is a pro-union song, and they were writing this song so that people understood what’s being done to workers, and there was no beating around the bush.
It feels so country too when things are about human rights and workers’ rights. This song aligns with a certain side of me because I really want more. I believe there’s a different reality than what we’re living.
It’s true. It’s that age old question of what art should do, when it should do it, and why it should do what it does.
Yes. And with this album, too, especially “Turns Out That I Am God,” it’s something where I want to say this. It’s so important for everybody to hear. It’s poetic, but also message driven. I want everyone to know that you are made of something that is holy, and you are so important.
Anyway, that’s my back-and-forth struggle with trying to make things message driven, but also personal.
“22 (OVER S∞∞N)” by Bon Iver
I love Bon Iver. And my husband loves Bon Iver. This came out on our honeymoon, and I remember we were in a hotel that had speakers, which still blows my mind. We blasted this album, and I remember this was the first song on the album. It was like “It might be over soon!”
His words are always all over the place. I rarely fully understand what’s happening in the best kind of choose-your-own-adventure way. But when he goes: “Where you gonna look for confirmation? / And if it's ever gonna happen / So as I'm standing at the station / It might be over soon.” It’s just like, Oh my god yeah.
It makes you ask yourself, ‘Why am I looking for validation outside of myself? I have everything I need inside.’ I just had full body chills.
I also remember wondering if there was something wrong with the speaker and then realising it was actually happening on purpose. That’s kind of the definition of this folk-meets-experimental progressive processing thing. Like talking folk into a new, modern era. That’s what I think of when I think of his music, and I just remember that moment sitting there, we were blown away.
The two of us couldn’t believe he made this, and it was so inspiring. He’s one of those people where sonically, if I sound like him at any time, I pat myself on the back. He’s so great.
Totally. This song feels like a precursor to SABLE, fABLE in some ways.
It definitely does. He does all the acoustic stuff and he’s like, ‘I know this is what you want, but come with me this way!’ And it gets further from what you think you want, but you’re singing along to the new stuff anyway.
“Losing You” by Randy Newman
This song is so peak songwriting. He has this story where he heard about a doctor who had to deliver news to the parents of a college-age kid who had a terminal illness. It was not going to be cured, and he had limited time.
The parents said they had lost so many people in the Holocaust, and it was obviously incredibly painful and difficult, but with time they had managed to find their footing and move forward. But this time, they said they were older now and wouldn’t have enough time to get over it.
Randy Newman took that story about death - in a medical setting - and made it into a love song. And the message of the song is a truth that I hold very important. Similar to The Weavers song, I think we’re a communal species and we’re trying to give each other knowledge in the hopes of our joint survival.
His stuff sounds so simple sometimes, but it’s so well thought out and so beautiful. To me, that’s honestly country. I maybe wouldn’t say Randy Newman is country, but taking something that’s a big, heavy, unanswerable question, or a big truth and putting it into the most simple terms possible so it gets delivered to everybody in a way that everybody understands is very country. And I think Randy did that on this one for me.
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