The Love and Lunacy of Cameron Cade

When Cameron Cade began putting out music as a solo artist two years ago, writing an album sounded like a fanciful daydream.

“I thought, ‘I’m never going to do an album until I have an audience to receive that album.’ I was just going to do singles,” Cade admits. “Then I just kept writing music.”

That eventually resulted in her first EP, 2023’s Scared of the Dark, followed by more standalones, which were enough for the queer indie-pop artist to build a local following, thanks to her honey-sweet vocals and whimsigoth aura.

The songs naturally kept coming and took shape into something more than just one-offs. Now, Cade is releasing her proper long-play, If You Make It Home For Dinner, which is out now.

“It’s so scary,” the 26-year-old singer-songwriter shares less than a week before the launch date. “It happened out of nowhere, and it happened really, really quickly. It’s going to be an interesting experience to see how people are going to receive these songs and process what these songs are even about because they were all written in a short period of time.”

The muse revealed itself most as Cade found herself in a new relationship. As the budding partnership grew more serious, lyrics mirrored her emotions. Afterwards, while refining the record, she found that the biggest surprise about falling in love was how much it required her to see herself in a new light.

“There are so many things I didn’t realize I did that being in a relationship and living with someone has taught me that I do,” she says. “I’m in this relationship and it’s really great, but oh my god – I’m forced to confront all of these things about myself that I didn’t know existed and I wasn’t necessarily ready or looking to confront.”

One of the biggest differences about this newfound romance is her partner. “I never thought I would date a man. I fully thought I was a lesbian, and realized I wasn’t,” she says. “Going from identifying as exclusively dating women to now being in a heterosexual relationship, and all the differences and what’s expected from you when you have a boyfriend. Not from your partner, but what society expects you to do and how they expect you to behave.”

On If You Make It Home For Dinner, she seeks to subvert such standards. Wrapped up in a cheery June Cleaver aesthetic, Cade is a bit batty with it, openly mocking the long-held traditions and assumptions of how women should behave in their role as significant others. The track “Be Your Girl” takes aim at that directly.

“It’s like you can sexualize yourself but not too much. God forbid you do what Sabrina Carpenter’s doing. There are all these expectations,” she says.

“Right On Time” is similar in that context.

“It portrays this perfect woman character, but with the undertones of the wild woman, the unhinged woman who would have gotten a lobotomy in the 1950s,” Cade adds. “She looks presentable, but oh, wait, she’s not. That’s what I’m trying to go for.”

Not all of the songs dismantle the housewife archetype, however. “Funeral” is about the tragic loss of a friend and neighbor, while previously released single “Kicked out of the Band” outlines a short-lived situationship with a well-known local group (we won’t name them here, since both parties have put it in the past).

“I feel like a lot of my music is really introspective,” Cade says.

Whatever she’s going through, she puts into her music, especially since moving to Denver four years ago after graduating from William & Mary in Virginia.

Musically, the album touches on alt-indie, folk, bedroom pop and even shoegaze, at times, to often ethereal effects. She teamed up with longtime co-producer Alex Newton, as well as local indie artist ego n friends on a couple of songs, to make that happen. Other than serenading throughout, Cade also played piano and guitar on the record. So while at the core If You Make It Home For Dinner deals with a personal metamorphosis, it also showcases a new side to Cade’s sound, including some aspects she plans to explore further.

“I want to branch out genre-wise. I love writing to pop music, but I haven’t written true pop, so I want to experiment with genres, more for the fun of it,” she says.

She hints that there is already some new material in the works, but she’s in no rush to get it out there anytime soon. For now, she’s going to let this release breathe and look at hosting a proper release show before the end of the year.

“I hope people can relate to my vulnerability and apply that and be able to be vulnerable in the same way and be honest with themselves,” she says regarding her debut. “It’s like loving yourself enough to change, but not hating yourself enough to change.

“When you’re going through a period of so much growth and change, you’re sometimes like, ‘Am I delusional? What’s going on here?'” Cade concludes. “It’s about being able to be grounded in that growth and know that you can trust yourself and those feelings and thoughts and revelations.”

If You Make It Home For Dinner is available on all streaming platforms.