How a $16 Paperback Rewired Camille Blackman's Songwriting

A $16 secondhand book ended up rewiring her entire approach to lyric-writing. In her interview with The FADER, Camille Blackman called Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "the best thing I've ever bought for under $100" — a line that sounds like a joke, until she follows it with something more sincere: "I think I'm a very different lyricist because of that book."

Blackman, a Mom+Pop signee, is currently working on her debut full-length, tentatively slated for early 2027. Raised in Washington, D.C., her music has been described as "bedroom folk," marked by a raspy voice and unconventional turns of phrase. Her latest single "kitchen" opens on a breakup — "Said some awful things / but you have said them twice before" — with lyrics that pull between falling apart and refusing to back down. That approach, in some sense, traces right back to her self-described reading habits: skipping the easy punchline and letting the emotion wander instead.

She's not really convinced that a lyric can be "misunderstood." Blackman says she writes down lines that resonate in the moment, and the meaning sometimes only surfaces later. "There's something powerful about a listener finding their own interpretation in my lyrics, whether or not that's what I originally meant."

She traces the roots of her taste back to D.C.'s National Gallery — her mother used to take her and her brother to see Impressionist paintings as a kid, with Degas, Cassatt, and Monet on the list. As for her musical awakening, she says the first album that truly felt like "her own taste" was Beach House's Bloom; before that, it was all her dad's '70s rock, Motown, and yacht rock. That Beach House obsession later carried over into live shows — she calls the best concert she's ever seen a solo trip to D.C.'s The Anthem for Beach House, where she pushed her way to the front row and nearly cried through the whole set.

Asked what level of fame she's hoping for, Blackman keeps it measured: she just wants her music to keep reaching the people who need to hear it — "and if it ends up landing me on Hot Ones, that wouldn't be a bad thing either." That line, paired with the "wet paint" stick-and-poke tattoo a friend gave her — meaningless at the time, but now something she reads as a reminder that she's "always a work in progress" — pretty much sums up where this newcomer stands right now: still writing, still waiting for the pieces to add up to something bigger.

Pricing, an exact release date, and further tracklist details for the debut album have not yet been announced.