At a time when she desperately needed a guiding light in the dark, Cam lit her own way with a wild journey inward. While dealing with the intense isolation of becoming a mother in the early days of the pandemic, the Nashville-based artist started writing songs as a means of finding solace, and soon unlocked an entirely new level of depth in her lyrics. As her daughter Lucy grew older and began asking bigger questions: “mom, what happens when we die?” (an inquiry prompted by the death of a beloved pet chicken), Cam felt called to dig even deeper and create a body of work embedded with insights for Lucy to carry with her through the years. Rooted in the enchanting vocal work shown on Cam’s 4X platinum, Grammy-nominated smash “Burning House,” her new album All Things Light arrives as a truly revelatory offering: a luminous selection of the kind of soul-baring songs we return to again and again, endlessly providing clarity and sustenance and ecstatic peace of mind.

“When I started this album it was like a dam broke and everything opened up in terms of what I was willing to explore, emotionally and conceptually,” says Cam, who cites the creative wellspring for All Things Light as the same source she drew from for her contributions to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter (a 2024 LP that earned Cam an Album of the Year Grammy for her songwriting contributions). “Because I have a daughter now, it felt like I couldn’t leave things unexamined—I had to look into the abyss and try to make meaning for her and for myself.”

Her third LP and first new music since The Otherside (a 2020 release featuring songwriting from Harry Styles, Sam Smith, and Avicii), All Things Light finds Cam working with her longtime producer Tyler Johnson (Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, Beyonce)  as well as an elite lineup of co-producers and contributors, including Michael Uzowuru (Frank Ocean, SZA), Ethan Gruska (boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers, Remi Wolf), and Jeff Bhasker (Kanye, Rihanna, Bruno Mars). Mainly recorded in Studio 3 at Hollywood’s historic EastWest Studios (the same space where classic albums like the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds came to life), All Things Light unfolds in a gorgeous convergence of country, folk, left-field pop, and more—a kaleidoscopic sound befitting of an artist whose background ranges from penning songs for pop icons like Miley Cyrus to collaborating with country legends like Vince Gill. “Tyler and I took our time trying different things in the studio, and all these amazing people would come through and add their ideas to the blend,” says Cam. “There’s a warmth and a roundness to what we created, and of all the things I’ve ever made it sounds closest to what I feel like on the inside.”

With its graceful entangling of catharsis, contemplation, and occasional epiphany, All Things Light sources its spiritual cosmology from what Cam refers to as a “patchwork of beliefs.” “I wasn’t raised with religion, so a lot of my beliefs come from ideas and practices I’ve encountered over the years,” says the Northern California-bred musician. Among the many experiences that shaped her understanding of the human spirit: singing requiems and folk music in upwards of 14 languages during her stint in a children’s choir; spending time traveling alone through Nepal and Egypt in her early 20s (at one point falling in love with an Eastern European guru); working as a psychology researcher at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley; reading the works of spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Ram Das and Alan Watts; taking up meditation as an undergrad at the University of California, Davis. “When I learned to meditate, I realized there is a constant hum of peace inside me once I turn my mind off,” says Cam. “It changed me to understand that, and I’m going to make sure my daughter understands it too.”

Dedicated to Lucy (whose name is derived from the Latin word for “light”), All Things Light takes its title from the lyrics on album opener “Turns Out That I Am God”: “I was busy waiting for someone to live my life/When I fell asleep for a hundred years one night/Dreamt myself to the center of all things light.” “There’s an Alan Watts talk where he speaks about how we’re all God, we’ve just forgotten,” says Cam. “I wanted this song to express that idea humbly, asking how we might live our lives if we acknowledged that we are all God together.” Like every song on All Things Light, “Turns Out That I Am God” sets Cam’s songwriting against a spellbinding sonic backdrop—in this case, a strangely potent arrangement of stacked vocals and stark guitar tones, immediately luring the listener into a more receptive state of mind.

Another track revealing Cam’s gift for distilling complex ideas into songs that hit with a glorious ease, “Alchemy” delivers a bright and jangly piece of folk-rock whose lyrics reference a Buddhist death meditation (“From dust to flesh to bones to dust/We are golden…Call it a miracle/I call it alchemy”). “I wanted to write something where we just focused on melody, but it turned into a song about reflecting on what we’re made of, where we’re coming from and where we’re going,” says Cam. From there, All Things Light drifts into the lilting acoustic guitar and moody piano lines of “Everblue,” a heavy-hearted stunner Cam sums up as “peak sad girl.” “I had a great childhood, and the real world has definitely fallen short of my dreams many times,” she says. “In a way I think we’re all eternally heartbroken by the world, and when I sing this song it’s a way of holding space for that heartbreak instead of going numb or giving up on dreaming.”

Over the course of its 11 songs, All Things Light brings Cam’s soul-searching to unexpected gems like “Slow Down”: a sweetly timeless country tune touched with gentle wisdom. “I think we do certain things because we haven’t stopped to question our behavior, or because at some point we were led to believe that’s what it takes to live a good life,” she says. “‘Slow Down’ is about asking why we’re always rushing, and I hope it reminds people to make time for themselves, especially women.” One of the album’s most hypnotic tracks, “Canyon” emerges as an existential cowboy song set in the moody desolation of the desert night. “To me ‘Canyon’ feels like calling out into an empty space for answers,” says Cam. “The point is that it’s not about the answers; it’s the calling out that makes you human.” And on “Hallelujah,” All Things Light takes on an otherworldly grandeur, building to an explosion of synth-driven psychedelia at the song’s outro. “When the world started opening up after Covid, it felt like we blew past the grieving period or any attempt at honoring what was lost,” says Cam. ‘Hallelujah’ came from looking around and seeing that everything seems to be in its place, but still feeling like something’s very wrong on the inside.”

The latest entry in an acclaimed catalog that includes her 2015 major-label debut Untamed (a No. 12 hit on the Billboard 200), All Things Light marks a bold new chapter in a life highly attuned to music’s potential as an uplifting force. “From a young age, I knew how important music was to the people I loved, how it could light you up and give you life,” she says. Looking back on her musical upbringing, she recalls a multitude of ineffably charmed moments: singing songs with her kid sister in their own invented language, listening to Bobby Darin and Herman’s Hermits records with her dad, watching her grandparents dance to Patsy Cline and learning to play “Sentimental Journey” on their piano. After taking up guitar while studying abroad in Italy and the Netherlands in college, Cam began writing songs and later formed her first band thanks in part to her sister’s encouragement. “When I was 24 and felt like my life was over because I hadn’t gotten into the psychology graduate program at Georgetown, my sister told me I was ridiculous for not pursuing music, because of how rare it was to be talented in the thing I love,” she says. Over the coming years, she moved from the Bay Area to Portland to L.A., eventually settling in Nashville as she achieved major success as both an artist and in-demand co-writer. In the midst of making All Things Light, Cam gained a greater comprehension of her natural affinity for music. “I recently got genetic testing done and found out that I’m more likely to code the information coming into my brain as a threat,” she says. “It’s retroactively helped me to understand why I’ve always been so obsessed with music, considering the way that music can calm your system on a physiological level.”

In the process of creating her most ambitious work to date, Cam brought her singular vision to All Things Light’s storybook-like album art, including a series of photos by Szilveszter Mako (a Milan-based photographer/art director who’s also shot the likes of Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, and Gwendoline Christie). In a visual representation of the unpaid labor of motherhood, Cam dons a suit in a number of the photos, such as the album’s striking cover image—a black-and-white photograph in which a burst of light wholly eclipses her face. In addition, the artwork includes a purposely shambolic tapestry conceptualized by Cam as “the physical manifestation of my patchwork of beliefs.” “We had artists create symbols from the songs, and then the tapestry was sewn together in very chaotic way,” she says. “It almost reminds me of my blankie as a kid, where at some point it became a warped rag but it was still so special to me.”

In choosing the closing track to All Things Light, Cam landed on a sublimely hopeful song called “We Always Do”: an open-hearted message of tender reassurance, adorned with epic harmonies and a lush string arrangement from Rob Moose (Bon Iver, HAIM). “Not a lot of this album is overtly positive, but I wanted to bring in some radical positivity at the end,” says Cam. “‘We Always Do’ is about a relationship, but it’s also a metaphor for humanity and the fact that we have an amazing ability to create, in a way that’s oddly unpredictable and unknowable. It’s so exhausting to live in complete fear, so I want to try to shift that and help people to find calm—and hopefully bring them to a place where they’re able to see themselves and the world at least a little bit better.”