Dove Cameron's influence on Gen. Z began far before her hit single boyfriend that dropped in February of 2022. Most people know her from her lead role in the Disney Channel series Liv and Maddie where she played twin girls navigating the dramas of high school and fame. However, her career in the performing arts began far before Disney Channel. Her acting career began in 2007 where she played the role of young Cosette in the Bainbridge Performing Arts stage production of Les Misérables. Although she has been in the public eye since Liv and Maddie in 2013, many aspects of Dove’s life went unspoken until the release of her first album Alchemical Vol. 1.
Chloe Celeste Hosterman was born on January 15th, 1996
in Bainbridge Island, Washington. At the young age of eight, she began acting
at the Bainbridge Performing Arts community theater. At 14, her family moved to
Los Angeles CA where she sang in Burbank High School's National Championship Show
Choir. When she was 15 her father passed away, and Cameron legally changed her
name to Dove, a nickname her father gave her. In 2012, she was cast as Alana in
the Disney Channel show Bits and Pieces, which was eventually remade into Liv
and Maddie. She began her music career with a multitude of singles both
with Disney and as a solo artist. However, it wasn't until 2022 that Dove
Cameron began separating herself from her Disney legacy.
With the release of her hit single “Boyfriend”, Dove finally “gave herself permission to do singer-songwriter stuff”. The song follows a young woman and her tale of fatal attraction to a man's girlfriend which not only revealed Cameron as a bisexual, but also presented her in a new light that many of her Disney fans were shocked by. “Boyfriend”’s unexpected success left Cameron feeling scared and vulnerable, and “it felt like everybody was in my living room interviewing me about my sexuality and my orientation, and it was just a very, very public way to have people see me as something they didn't know that I was.”
However, the vulnerability from “Boyfriend” encouraged
Cameron to talk about her life behind the scenes through the release of Alchemical
Vol. 1 on December 1st of 2023. Throughout this album, she allows herself
to open up about her trauma, mental health, depression, anxiety and eating
disorder which she had previously been terrified to speak about. Yet the
vulnerability of these topics was a tool Cameron was able to use to connect
with her audience and create raw authentic music people everywhere could relate
to it. Part of her process of creating the album was her backpack containing
her journal, a lyric book and a poetry book which allowed her to channel her
emotions into her music. Cameron's creative process stems from the 3:00 AM
poetry writing sessions on her bathroom floor where she releases her angers and
traumas she has accumulated over her life. She tends to “blood-let” and “hit
these big energetic walls and it's like, If I do not get this out of my body
right now, I will be writing about this forever. Or if I don't write about it,
period, I'm not going to write anything good in the next five years.”
Alchemical Vol. 1 combines many musical techniques from both American pop and the French Funk she grew up on. The album combines both the romantic, sexy atmosphere from "Boyfriend" with the big sound, jazz, dubstep atmosphere influenced by Daft Punk, Justice and French pop artists. There are also Beatles, David Bowie, Elvis Presley, and Iggy Pop themes that pop up throughout the album. The collections of musical techniques, personal experiences, and traumas from over the years allowed Cameron to create tracks that were dark and honest, but also interstellar and haunting.
Similar to Nick Cave’s music, Dove Cameron finds that vulnerability
can create the best music while also granting the artist therapeutic self-reflection.
Despite Cave’s creative process living in the studio repeating rhythms being
far from Cameron’s 3:00 am poetry writing, their vulnerability creates relatable,
meaningful, and ethereal songs that connect with people around the world. Since
Dove Cameron’s first single, she received the AMA “New Artist of the Year”, and
MTV’s “Best New Artist”, and “Best Video with a Social Message” for “Boyfriend”
and “Breakfast”, solidifying her reign as the “Resident Villainess of Pop”.
Sources:
https://www.papermag.com/dove-cameron-we-go-down#rebelltitem11
Wow, Dove Cameron's journey is truly inspiring and fascinating to learn about. It's so cool to see how she started from a young age in community theater, made it to Hollywood, and is now using her platform to address important topics like mental health and identity. Her choice to embrace her authentic self, in both personal life and artistic professional life, is really brave and admirable!
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up with Dove Cameron on Disney channel with my sister, watching her find her footing outside of it was so interesting. I loved how you went a little deeper into how each step of her impressive journey effected her and her creativity. I especially loved the way you talked about her growth as an artist and how important vulnerability is in creativity.
ReplyDeleteI loved hearing more about Dove's background and how she came to changing her name in honor of her father. I also think it's interesting how she was able to pivot so easily and relatively quickly from a Disney star to a women opening up about her sexuality through music. I feel like many other Disney stars (especially women) have a much longer struggle to break free of their innocent, clean, Disney aesthetic. It's cool to see that she didn't fall victim to that and that she was able to overcome that and be a successful artist.
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