Dove Cameron is 'Out of Touch' But It's Her Best Music Yet

When I first heard that Dove Cameron would be releasing her own original music, I was hesitant to listen. Most people know her from her Disney Channel days, where she played identical twins on Liv and Maddie and bad girl Mal, daughter of Maleficent, on Disney's Descendants. I knew her from her role as Amber Von Tussle from Hairspray: Live, where I was impressed by her strong, yet delicate vocals.

Her Instagram has a dark, romantic aesthetic that I couldn't really understand, at first. On the outside, Dove reminded me exactly of that: a dove. White, beautiful, and innocent, everything doves symbolized in literature. I thought it was a front. Another Disney star trying to remove her Disney image, so she could come across as more mature and land edgier roles. But the more I learned about Dove's childhood and adolescence, the more I began to take her seriously.

She's candid in interviews about the best friend she lost at eight years old, the tragic result of a homicide-suicide. She's increasingly more honest about the pain she feels having lost her father to suicide at the age of 15 and how as the years go by, she has less physical proofs to remember him by (her name, Dove, is a nickname her father called her by). And this past summer, she lost a dear friend, a true and trailblazing light in this dark world, Cameron Boyce – she posted a raw and emotional video to Instagram about how much he really helped her in her moments of darkness.

I realized that maybe there was more to her than this persona I created for her in my head. That maybe the dark romantic aesthetic wasn't an aesthetic, after all.

The first two songs Dove released of her new music were Bloodshot/Waste, a two-song EP that has garnered almost 7.5 million streams on Spotify. The first time I listened to them, I thought they were pretty and raspy-sounding. The songs were released around the start of my last semester at college, and I remember I had them playing low when I listened so I didn't actually hear what she was singing. I wasn't as impressed at the time and moved onto another playlist. Sometime after that, Dove released So Good, which flew under my radar.

It wasn't until she released Out of Touch, the day after my birthday, that I finally stopped writing her off as another Disney ex-act trying to take on a more mature sound for the fun and games of it. Out of Touch is my favorite song of hers to date, and possibly one of my favorite songs of 2019. It's slightly rock, mostly dark pop. It's confident and cocky ("Yeah I put you through some things but at least it ain't boring"), moody and mellow ("And I'm trying not to push you too much, Yeah I'm trying but it's not good enough, I been on one, and I can't keep on lying to myself"), while also romantic ("No you never sugar-coat and that's why you're the greatest").

Finally! A troubled young woman writing about the emotional complexities of troubled, young women who don't know how to handle their feelings and lash out with their words when they're struggling. This is a messy woman embracing her struggles of being messy, while wanting to be loved. It does not mean she is not a strong nor a smart woman and it does not make her a weak woman, undeserving of such love. It makes her a human being.

I listened to this song on repeat for weeks. One time I was driving home from the mall, and I blared the song on the radio, with the windows down, singing at the top of my lungs. I was struck suddenly with an idea for a story, and I tested it as a Fanfiction first. I had fun writing it, even more fun listening to the song while writing it, and then I wanted to make it my own work. I wanted to embody the spirit of Out of Touch into my own short story, or novel, or screenplay – but something that was my own. As an homage to what I felt to be the message behind the song.

Dove has since released, Remember Me, a pop collaboration with rapper, Bia, and describes it to MTVNews as: "It feels very much like the dark, teenage-dream love story that people like me always dream about." And it's this quote that cements it for me: I am officially a Dove Cameron stan. She gets why it's hard to listen to mainstream Taylor Swift songs and relate to the enchanting, fairy-tale aspect of love (although I wonder if she's listened to Swifts' Haunted, arguably an incredible dark love song).

I first heard Remember Me on a livestream she did in collaboration with Global Citizen and World Health Organization, where I heard the lyrics beautiful and delicate, reminding me exactly of what I thought of Dove as in the first place: a dove. (Beautiful and delicate are indeed in the chorus, but they're proceeded by the lyrics, beautiful and talking shit. Pure genius.)

Cause things get ugly way too quick, you know? Life comes in the way and you have to take off those rose-colored glasses and feel the pain, feel the ugly, feel the sadness, in order to feel the beautiful. I thought I was so profound in my younger years, for drawing a picture of a flower that bloomed under these raindrops, with the caption being something like: we must feel sadness in order to feel happy.

But to me, it's Dove Cameron who gets that more than anyone. For me, she's my Taylor Swift, writing about the ugly in a way that's hauntingly beautiful. Her most popular songs on Spotify might be from her Disney Channel days, but her best songs are certainly the ones that reveal her soul, unapologetically. I have no doubt her album will be full of music that continues to give us glimpses into her mind and her heart, completely shedding that Disney skin and coming into her own.

Here's to the pop revolution, Dove 🥂.

(Also she lied in that Instagram post. She did not perform all of her original music, leaving out her best song, Out of Touch. She's forgiven, though. I imagine that song might be hard to perform live. I had been hoping to hear her sing it during her show in New York (4/23), but I guess that chance will have to wait...)

(Also also, I have since re-listened to Bloodshot, Waste, and So Good, and I'm feeling a bit ridiculous for not getting into them sooner. My official ranking of Dove's music stands as:

1. Out of Touch

2. Remember Me

3. Bloodshot

4. So Good

5. Waste)