When Cameron Whitcomb went to record his debut album on the heels of a meteoric rise, he laid out one rule for himself. “I want to tell the truth,” he says of a record that explores mental darkness, teenage addiction, recovery and — eventually — hope.
That record is The Hard Way, a deeply personal full-length project for Whitcomb. A 22-year-old from Nanaimo, British Columbia, he’s already seen three singles certified gold or better in Canada and was named Breakthrough Artist of the Year last month at the Canadian Country Music Awards.
The Hard Way stands as a 15-track record best understood as Whitcomb’s autobiography. With the country music landscape now punctuated by a generation of young songwriters laying bare personal trauma and intense heartache, Whitcomb wanted his first full-length to capture his life so far, darkness be damned.
“Records that I really relate to are the ones that I can listen to, top to bottom, and hear the whole story,” Whitcomb tells Rolling Stone. “Like, a work of art rather than a bunch of songs put together.
“The Hard Way kind of summed it up. I feel like everything in my life, I’ve had to learn the hard way. This record means a lot to me.”
The haunting title track finds Whitcomb vulnerably revealing thoughts of suicide. “Wakin’ up worthless, should’ve worked up the courage to kill myself,” introduce a journey through depression and self-doubt, and the ultimate realization that those feelings can only be overcome with a reckoning. That’s where Whitcomb finds himself now.
“I don’t know, you write it, and it’s easy, but it’s hard to say out loud,” Whitcomb says. “I’ve thought about killing myself forever. Now, I still have those thoughts, but things are so incredible, and things are so great. I can’t do that — especially because there have been so many people who share their stories with me and say that I helped them. I couldn’t be that guy. It’s not an option anymore.”
By his estimation, Whitcomb started drinking around age 13 or 14. Meth followed not long after that. He left home when he was 17 and took a job working on a pipeline in Western Canada. He spent his off-hours either singing karaoke or posting videos of cover songs on social media. In 2022, an American Idol representative saw one of his videos and invited Whitcomb to audition. He finished in the top 20 for the season and decided to take music seriously in the wake. He started writing songs and quickly found an audience on social media. At the same time, he owned up to his own addiction and swore off substances by the time he was 20. His father and best friend were heavily influential in that decision.
“I got clean because my best friend got clean,” Whitcomb explains. “He nearly OD’ed and went into treatment. I watched how everything kind of changed. At that point, I was trying to do the music thing, but doing music while also doing meth doesn’t really work very well.
“I got clean, and I started writing about it. I was writing songs that were for me, and not necessarily what I thought other people wanted to hear.”
While he was working through recovery, Whitcomb would write a song and immediately post it on social media, where he found an open-minded fan base. “It was crazy the reaction that I got,” he recalls now.
It also explains the heaviness in Whitcomb’s lyrics and the challenges they posed to a young artist. Over the past three years, his sound has oscillated between folk and rock. He sings with a gravelly voice that complements the intensity of his lyrics.
“The first session of my career,” he says, “I showed up with these lyrics, and the guy was like, ‘Are you sure people are gonna understand what you’re trying to say? You should probably dumb it down just a little bit. Nobody’s gonna know what you mean.’ And it kind of put a bad taste in my mouth.”
Whitcomb powered through and released three songs — ”Quitter,” “Medusa,” and “Options” — that changed the trajectory of his life and his music. The first two reached platinum status, and “Options” reached gold. All three made the cut for The Hard Way.
Whitcomb started touring in earnest in 2023 and signed to Atlantic Records in 2024. He found himself selling out concert halls like New York’s Bowery Ballroom. His current tour — dubbed the I’ve Got Options Tour — features two sold-out nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and another at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl. He has also been announced as part of the 2026 Stagecoach lineup.
By every measure, Whitcomb’s life is going good at the moment. He bought a house for himself this summer, though he says he has only been in it twice. He says he’s working on finding the right balance between touring and home life. Understanding that he is, essentially, a work in progress is part of recovery and looking to the future.
“I invested a lot in the production side of things,” he says of this tour. “I don’t care if I make any money on touring. I just want the show to be sick and one that we can do comfortably. The more comfortable things are, the more I get to hang out with friends and the better I feel.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.
