Dove Cameron opened up to Billboard’s Rania Aniftos about creating her album 'Alchemical: Volume 1,' life after the success of her track “Boyfriend,” being vulnerable in her writing and the lessons she learned from her Disney Channel days.
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00:00 It was just like I was learning as I went
00:01 and everybody was watching every inch of it.
00:04 Hey, I'm Dove Cameron and this is Billboard News.
00:07 (upbeat music)
00:10 - Hey everybody, it's Rania Niftos with Billboard News
00:22 and I am so excited to be here with singer-songwriter,
00:25 Emmy Award winner, Dove Cameron.
00:28 - Hey.
00:29 (laughing)
00:31 - I'm so excited to be here with you.
00:32 - Me too.
00:33 - It's been a long time coming.
00:34 - It has been a long time coming.
00:35 We've both been manifesting this to happen.
00:38 - Apparently.
00:38 ♪ I eat boys like you for breakfast ♪
00:41 ♪ One by one hung on the neighbors ♪
00:45 ♪ I could feed a flat a boyfriend in him ♪
00:48 ♪ I could do the shit that he never did ♪
00:51 ♪ And I have less pieces of you ♪
00:54 ♪ Than I can hold in my hand ♪
00:58 - So your debut album, Alchemical Part One.
01:02 So you're splitting it into two parts.
01:03 What was the idea behind telling a story
01:07 in sequence like that?
01:08 - I felt like I was writing the two halves
01:11 in such different head spaces.
01:14 Like the first half was really like about
01:16 the ending of something and an entire year of my life
01:19 and the processing of that that happened.
01:22 And then there was like a very stark kind of
01:24 sonic page turn when it came to
01:27 the sort of like next musical phase that I stepped into.
01:29 It just kind of ended up making sense to split it.
01:31 - You've also been sprinkling singles
01:34 throughout the past few years
01:35 and now you finally have a full project out.
01:38 How does that feel to have like a complete body of work
01:41 to share with your fans?
01:42 - It's really nice.
01:43 I think especially because I can see the full trajectory
01:47 of when the full project is out.
01:49 It's all gonna add up to one album.
01:51 This to me is the warmup for the full album,
01:54 but it's really nice to be releasing at least
01:56 the beginning of a body of work.
01:58 - Right.
01:59 - 'Cause it does feel a little bit like,
02:01 (laughs)
02:03 feels a little bit like revving an engine
02:05 and like putting the brakes on to be
02:06 doing singles all the time.
02:08 Like that was just driving me a little nuts.
02:10 ♪ The universe must have defined it ♪
02:13 ♪ Mm, mm ♪
02:15 What happened with my music was so backwards
02:17 from what normally happens.
02:18 You know, normally you release an album
02:19 and then something off the album
02:20 is like the big runaway hit, right?
02:22 - Right, right, right.
02:22 - But because I had this,
02:24 basically like one of my very first songs changed my life,
02:27 I had to like go back and sort of give emotional context
02:30 to like how I got there,
02:32 which is kind of like what this first half is
02:35 before I round the corner and sort of like
02:38 return to the boyfriend and breakfast sort of era.
02:41 This is like, I'm almost like doubling back energetically.
02:44 - Okay.
02:44 - Yeah, which has been a really interesting exercise.
02:47 - Is it hard?
02:48 Because you are very open and vulnerable, you know,
02:51 in interviews and on social media,
02:53 but music might be different.
02:55 Is it, was it tough for you to open up
02:57 and kind of share a more stripped back,
03:00 raw version of yourself at all?
03:02 - It was.
03:03 I always said that I never wanted to release any sad music
03:06 or any ballads because I think I was really avoidant
03:09 for a long time in my life.
03:10 And I was like, everything's amazing.
03:11 I'm so, so happy.
03:12 - I can feel that.
03:13 - I like wasn't.
03:14 - Brutal.
03:15 - I was really not happy.
03:15 But I decided that like,
03:17 if I was ever going to be the person, right?
03:20 Because like your personhood and your life
03:23 has to come before anything.
03:25 And if I was ever going to become the person
03:27 that I wanted to be,
03:28 and because music is so important to me
03:30 and it's such a huge part of my life,
03:31 I had to integrate what has happened so far.
03:35 And I have to write for me first and foremost.
03:38 'Cause that's always the stuff that I think
03:40 is the hardest to write.
03:41 Is like when you're not thinking like,
03:42 what are people gonna like?
03:43 But you're like,
03:44 what am I having such a hard time saying to myself?
03:47 - Something I've learned is the only way
03:49 to actually truly get past something
03:51 is to really look at it and open the wound
03:53 and experience all the feelings of it
03:56 so that you can process it.
03:57 - Right, well, so I,
03:58 that's why the album is actually called Alchemical.
04:00 So it's obviously relating to the word alchemy,
04:03 which is the process of taking one thing
04:05 and transmuting it into another.
04:07 And I started to mess around with the idea
04:10 of that I have that tattooed on my shoulder.
04:11 I said to someone recently who was struggling
04:13 with like facing their own pain,
04:15 and we were talking about that.
04:17 And I offered a metaphor that was like,
04:19 I try to imagine that every big, ugly,
04:24 indisputably ugly thing that happens in our life
04:27 is like if we are to imagine that we are a slab of marble
04:30 and every big, scary happening is the pick ax
04:35 that is like revealing the shape of the statue underneath.
04:39 We have to be, we can choose to be,
04:42 I guess I should say, grateful for these things
04:44 because we can either live our lives
04:46 as this amorphous thing
04:48 that we never quite make out the shape of
04:50 and it's fine and perfectly safe,
04:52 or these things that happen, we can say,
04:54 okay, I had no choice in this matter.
04:56 This was always going to be, or maybe not, but it was.
05:00 And it showed me who I really am
05:04 because those are the situations
05:05 that fast forward your development.
05:07 - A moment of connection, which is all you need sometimes.
05:10 - Oh my God, it changes my life every time.
05:12 - And I feel like you set the precedent with that,
05:14 like stemming even back to your first introduction
05:16 as Dove Cameron, the artist's boyfriend, right?
05:19 Top 20 on the Hot 100, which is insane.
05:24 Like fresh out the gate.
05:25 And that created, it became like a queer anthem
05:29 for people who don't want to be labeled.
05:31 They don't, they just want to experience love
05:33 that the way they do.
05:34 Did you know or feel like that might grow to that magnitude
05:38 when you released it or wrote it?
05:41 - No, it's so funny because when I wrote it,
05:44 it was so not empowering.
05:47 It was so based on a night that was like,
05:50 ended in lots of tears and FaceTiming my best friend
05:53 and being like, I need you to talk me through
05:55 what just happened.
05:57 And I was just like recounting it in the studio.
06:00 And we wrote it so quick
06:01 because obviously it was very fresh.
06:03 But it took on like a whole new life
06:04 because of just a few days of processing.
06:07 But it became sort of like the story I needed to tell myself.
06:10 ♪ I could see a better boyfriend than him ♪
06:13 ♪ I could do the shit that he never did ♪
06:16 It's nice because obviously there's queer music
06:19 on the radio.
06:20 Like it's not like Boyfriend broke any sort of barrier
06:23 or record or anything like that.
06:24 But it was cool for me to see how widely embraced it was
06:29 because I think my own experience
06:31 with my internalized homophobia,
06:33 being a queer person growing up,
06:34 like whatever parts of myself I rejected.
06:37 - Yeah.
06:38 - And to have people not only accept that of me,
06:43 but then also have it feel like it was something
06:45 that like brought people into my life.
06:48 (upbeat music)
06:50 - Now even further back,
06:53 you come from the Disney Channel cycle,
06:56 which is such a unique experience for people.
06:59 How did being part of Disney kind of build you up
07:02 to be the artist that you are
07:03 or in a good way or a bad way anyway?
07:05 - I was so young.
07:06 It almost feels like it didn't happen.
07:08 Like, yeah, you know, like, like, you know,
07:10 it's like when people are like,
07:11 tell me about middle school.
07:12 And I know that sounds funny
07:13 because there's all of this video footage of me
07:16 on the Disney Channel, right?
07:17 Like, so people are like, shut up.
07:18 Like that can't be real,
07:19 but it just was such a whirlwind and it was so fast.
07:22 And it, my life changed so drastically.
07:25 Like to go from being a 14 year old doing whatever
07:29 to then like that, that whole thing,
07:31 that whirlwind experience with them that is so singular.
07:34 Cause it's, it's, I think it's like one of the only
07:36 like old fashioned studio contracts left.
07:38 Like it's just really, it's very like MGM classics.
07:41 I had no idea what I was doing
07:42 and I had no idea who I was.
07:44 And I just kind of was going with the flow
07:47 and like try not to upset anybody.
07:48 And I was trying to process like a lot going on
07:51 in my own young life.
07:52 And I was bleaching my hair blonde.
07:55 I was dating boys.
07:56 I was, you know, I was just doing whatever,
07:58 whatever I was doing as a young teenager.
08:00 It is funny because I do think it did inform my work ethic
08:03 quite a lot because I, I didn't go to college.
08:05 I went to Disney.
08:06 And so because there was so much like cross genre
08:11 stuff happening, you know, there was dance,
08:13 there was, there was recording, there was live performing,
08:15 there was some elements of touring, there was acting,
08:18 there was twin acting, there was, there was movies,
08:21 there was all this stuff.
08:22 And then there was like radio promo
08:24 and then traveling to different territories
08:25 and performing at the parks.
08:26 Like it was just this wild experience.
08:29 - Intensive.
08:30 - It was an intensive.
08:30 It was an intensive, the most like a cataloged internship
08:35 of all time.
08:35 It was just like, I was learning as I went
08:37 and everybody was watching every inch of it.
08:40 And I really, I had a good time, you know,
08:42 like I think the work of it was the least stressful part
08:46 for me of being like a person during that time.
08:48 I think everything personally was crashing
08:50 and burning for me.
08:51 Like I was like, you know, barely surviving my personal life.
08:55 - But it's also adolescence.
08:56 That's how it works.
08:57 - Right.
08:58 But then, but then, you know, when I would go to work,
08:59 that was like my safe space.
09:00 - From the past to the future,
09:02 what can you tell us about part two?
09:04 What's coming up next for you?
09:05 What's going on?
09:06 - I'm spacing it out pretty linearly.
09:08 So it's sort of like part one is very much like how
09:12 the processing of how I got to be the person that I am now.
09:16 And part two is definitely more celebratory.
09:19 It's definitely much sexier.
09:21 It's definitely darker, but in, you know,
09:23 I think it's going to sort of like tie the sort of
09:26 boyfriend breakfast, bad idea world together
09:28 with everything that I'm releasing on part one.
09:31 And I got a couple of cool collabs
09:32 and a couple of interesting fun things happening
09:34 that I'm really excited for people to hear.
09:37 As soon as someone gives me the green light,
09:39 I'm like just putting the shit out there.
09:41 I'm really, really excited.
09:42 - I love it.
09:43 I'm so happy for you.
09:44 Thank you so much.
09:45 - Thank you so much.
09:46 (upbeat music)
09:49 (whooshing)