Cameron Whitcomb

After trying his hand at making it on a season of American Idol in 2022, country singer Cameron Whitcomb has started to make an impact in his native Canada with compelling, upbeat, heartfelt tunes delivered with an appealing raspy twang. The title track from his debut EP, Quitter (2024), and the singles “Medusa” and “Hundred Mile High” have all placed on his country’s Hot 100 survey.

Whitcomb, born in 2003 in Alberta, Canada, and raised in the British Columbia city of Nanaimo, was hardly a candidate for country success as a youth. He grew up idolizing Eminem and local hip-hop acts and also struggled with substance abuse issues as a teenager. After leaving home to work on a pipeline, he finally made the country connection when his brother introduced him to the music of Johnny Cash. Soon after, he’d find inspiration in the work of former Florida Georgia Line singer Tyler Hubbard and start posting videos of his own covers on social media.

In 2022, one of those videos netted him an audition on the 20th season of the long-running music competition show American Idol. Whitcomb's renditions of Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and even Black Sabbath appealed to audiences, and he placed within the Top 20 contestants before ultimately being eliminated. Undeterred, he began to pursue music-making more seriously, self-releasing the singles “Shoot Me Dead” and “The Devil I’ve Seen” in 2023 and 2024, racking up tens of millions of streams between the two. Whitcomb soon inked a deal with Atlantic Records and recorded the EP Quitter. The title track, inspired by his story of attaining sobriety, became a modest hit on the Canadian Hot 100 and his most-streamed track to date, a feat nearly matched by the follow-up, “Medusa,” released later that year. Whitcomb embarked on his first tour of North America in 2024 and released one more single, “Hundred Mile High,” to close out the year. ~ Mike Duquette