Arista Nashville/RCA RecordsHow do you follow up one of the most-talked-about songs of the year that’s already been nominated for a Grammy and an ACM Award? Thanks to feedback from her fans, Cam says it was much easier deciding on the successor to her breakthrough hit, “Burning House.”

“[“Mayday”] is a lot of people’s favorite song, actually. It’s got a really cool drum beat to it, which I programmed in the beginning,” she says proudly. “But now it’s real drums on it.”

Cam’s new single has its roots in a period of time when she moved to the Northwest, and was actually started by her co-writer, Tyler Johnson.

“I moved to Portland for about six months with my best friends before I started on this whole journey,” she recalls. “Because I was like, ‘I know I need to work on my chops and write, but I know I can hang out with my friends in the meantime.’ Tyler started that song about an old relationship and then handed it to me, and in the verses you’ll hear kind of this run-on sentence,” she says, breaking into song. “‘You are overbearing, I’m not in love, but I don’t want to tell you.’  And it’s like these different ideas, and it really is like this internal monologue because Tyler thought some of these things, and then I added on.”

The 31-year-old says like many of the songs on her debut album Untamed, “Mayday” was inspired by things she’s learned in the past decade.

“It’s just sort of this back and forth in your mind about, ‘Why are you still in this relationship?’ And you kind of are playing the victim, calling out ‘Mayday,’ but really it takes two people to be in this relationship. You have to learn how to not be afraid of being alone, and these are all things that I learned in my twenties.”

So far, Cam’s life lessons are reaping big dividends. Just this week, she was nominated for four trophies at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards. Three of those are for “Burning House”– Video of the Year, and nods as both producer and artist in the Single Record of the Year category. She’s also in the running for New Female Vocalist.

You can watch Cam’s live performance of her new single “Mayday” at The Year in Vevo online now.

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