May 27, 2023. Cameron Whitcomb’s dry date is never far from his mind. For addicts in recovery, the road to sobriety isn’t easy; to avoid drugs and alcohol takes work. Relapses happen, but it’s important to not let slips derail you from staying clean.
Select the image to access the YouTube lyric video of the Cameron Whitcomb song “Quitter”
“My best friend OD’ed, then got clean, and I watched his life change,” recalls the singer-songwriter, born in Peace River, Alberta, of his own rock bottom. “That was the turning point for me.” With sobriety comes a clear mind, and – in Whitcomb’s case – the inspiration to pen authentic anthems like the title track from his 2024 five-song EP Quitter, with its catchy, hard-hitting chorus:
The hardest part of getting clean are all the damn apologies
Paying tolls on bridges that I’ve burnt
I’ve been afraid of growing up ’cause that would mean to sober up
But stoned and drunk don’t mix with loving her
Does that make me a quitter?
“Quitter” debuted at 96 on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 in October of 2024; at press time, it had spent 11 weeks on the charts, peaking at 55. The earworm has earned the songwriter 37 million Spotify streams, and counting. One key to his success is an active and engaging social media presence: Whitcomb enjoys 23.9 million likes on TikTok and has more than 824 million Instagram followers.
We chat with the songwriter on a late afternoon in January of 2025. He’s catching a few breaths, secluded with his dog, in a log cabin on his manager’s farm in rural British Columbia. It’s the same locale where he sobered up. The 21-year-old artist’s jetlag is apparent; Whitcomb had just landed, on a flight from France that day, returning from a five-city European radio promo junket – with stops in Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, Amsterdam, and Paris.
After one sleep, a pit stop was planned for Vancouver, to buy a luxury watch he had his eye on; then, on to Nashville, to write and record with another young star, one that Whitcomb is mentoring: 15-year-old Jonas Conner. A trio of Canadian dates in late February will be followed by the just-announced “Hundred Mile High” headlining tour (name after his song): a month-long string of U.S. shows that begins March 13 and ends April 10, and includes a gig at the famed Bowery Ballroom in New York City. Whitcomb then gets to grab a shower at home, before jetting off again, this time to Australia, to join his friend, Platinum-selling country artist Sam Barber. Whitcomb isn’t the slightest bit resentful of the insane schedule; instead, he’s filled with gratitude. “It beats digging ditches and the nine-to-five!” he laughs.
Which he has literally done. Not so long ago, Whitcomb spent his winters toiling six days a week, 12 hours a day, on the Trans Mountain oil pipeline in Kamloops, B.C.; summers were spent tinkering with Harley Davidson motorcycles. A high-school dropout and addict (who started drinking and drugging before he turned 13), the young man was staring down a lifetime of manual labour. What changed?
“It beats digging ditches and the nine-to-five!”
For fun, and as a respite from long, monotonous days working on the pipeline, Whitcomb started posting videos to Reddit of him singing karaoke of Tyler Childers songs from his couch. An American Idol executive liked what they heard, and invited the Canadian to audition for the show in 2022.
Despite having never sung in public before the tryout, Whitcomb – singing Utah Phillips’s “Rock Salt and Nails” – received a golden ticket; the teenager celebrated by doing a backflip in front of the judges. On season 20 of American Idol, Whitcomb made it all the way to the Top 20. Reflecting on his Idol experience, Whitcomb says getting axed by the show was fortuitous, for a couple of reasons. First, he didn’t have to sign one of their label agreements, which are known as not very artist-friendly; second, it gave him the time and the motivation to commit to developing his music career.
“After I got kicked off American Idol, I spent the whole summer just trying to pursue music, learning to play the guitar and taking singing lessons,” says Whitcomb. “It didn’t work out right away, so I went back to working on the pipeline that winter to save up some money.”
Making a promise to himself that that pipeline stint was his last, the artist applied the same hard work gleaned from this labor-intensive job to his newfound love of making music. Whitcomb leveraged the power of social media by posting videos of him playing songs on his guitar every day; gradually, he built a following. “It’s a huge marketing tool,” he says, in reference to social media. “If you can learn how to use it, it’s truly incredible.”
Before the hits, there were many misses, but Whitcomb’s passion to succeed – combined with a dedication and desire to learn, and post consistently on his social media platforms – saw him go, within a year, from playing small rooms to selling-out 500-capacity venues, and eventually signing a deal in 2024 with Atlantic Records.
Select the image to access the YouTube video of Cameron Whitcomb’s audition for American Idol
Whitcomb’s most recent single “Hundred Mile High,” produced by longtime collaborator Jack Riley, was released at the end of January; another melodic song with big hooks, it surpassed 44,000 YouTube views in its first two days.
What’s next for the songwriter? Expect a full-length debut on Atlantic Records in 2025. Whitcomb recently spent 10 days in the California desert (at Joshua Tree), where he and some of his collaborators and co-writers rented a house, and laid the groundwork for a planned concept album.
“I’ve got tons of new songs in the works,” he says. “I want to make an album like some of Marshall Mathers’s [Eminem’s] records, where there’s a real storyline, and every song transitions into the next.”
One of the new songs is called “No Other Option.” It’s about pursuing a life in music and never looking back, but also a reminder to stay sober, no matter what. “There are so many people looking up to me now that it would be extremely wrong to throw everything out the window for a drink,” Whitcomb says. “It’s just not an option anymore.”