Last year, if you looked at any of my playlists or asked who my favorite artists were, Cameron Whitcomb wouldn’t even have been close to the top. When his album The Hard Way came out in 2025, I gave it a listen and didn’t find anything interesting to me. However, looking back at it, the album is way better than I gave it credit for. Songs like “Options” and “Medusa” are now regulars in my playlists, even if heavily recommended songs like “Quitter” didn’t quite hit. Recently, his new EP Deep Water dropped, and I have no idea what happened in the time between then and about two weeks ago, but the EP and aforementioned album has made Whitcomb one of my favorite artists. He has become someone I listen to no matter how I’m feeling or the time of day, because of the way he describes depression, addiction, and joy. This has really struck a chord for me during the time of chaos and stress that is the last two months of the school year.

Normally, we expect the music we hear to sound perfect with a polished feeling and perfect, predictable lyrics. Cameron Whitcomb, however, just gives off a feeling of authenticity that I haven’t found anywhere else. His lyrics describe his fights with things like addiction and toxicity, and this type of emotional honesty is crucial to how I see him as a character and how I listen to the music. The rough edges in his voice and sparing use of autotune make his music feel more real and less like some of the more basic sounds in the music industry. In his new EP Deep Water, he continues this practice, but touches on more topics that really hit close to home for me, with lyrics such as “I know I’ve been a lot of things, but I won’t be your burden” in “Kingdom of Fear” and “Say the word and I would go // Leave behind the man who sold // his soul for peace and quiet” in “Sounds Like Heaven”. This type of relatability (even if it isn’t relatable to me specifically, just that it could be) really makes an artist stand out.

Another reason why his music has been a regular through my headphones is that he dips into so many different genres. His most listened to song, “Medusa,” is a stomp-and-holler song with a bit of country mixed in, but other songs, such as “You and Me,” are slow ballads that are easy to listen to. With his typical combo of folk and country, thrown in with the occasional slow country and ballad, the music stays fresh even by the dozenth listen. My favorite songs are “Kingdom of Fear” and “Crying on the Inside” because of how the singer views himself in the music, but also because it doesn’t matter if I actually feel that way; they are still bangers. The fact that all of Whitcomb’s songs can be so emotionally transparent and have an upbeat vibe at the same time not only makes them perfect no matter the mood or setting, but also means that most can be put on at any moment throughout the day, whether it be trying to get out of bed in the morning, venting in the car ride home, or trying to wind down in the evening.