Facing the Light

BC Camplight’s Journey Through Bravery and Sobriety

Photo by: Marieke Macklon

When BC Camplight talks about his latest record, it’s not in grand statements or flashy metaphors. He’s measured but open, the kind of person who’s thought a lot about pain — and even more about what comes after.

“This record is for people trying to find bravery,” he said, and you believe him. It’s not a soundbite. It’s the kind of clarity that comes from years of circling the same emotional terrain, only now without numbing it.

Songwriting, for him, has always been a place to be honest — or at least, to trick himself into honesty. Even when the lyrics felt like they belonged to a character, that character was always circling something true. “I’d write through this imaginary person,” he explained, “and then look back and realize, ‘oh, I was talking about myself the whole time.’” That sleight of hand — saying what needs to be said while pretending it’s not quite personal — is one of the strange luxuries of being an artist. “I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have that.”

The people who gravitate toward his music seem to understand this instinctively. His fan base isn’t chasing trends; they’re tuned in to something quieter but heavier — conversations around mental illness, anxiety, and survival. “We’re not shy,” he said. “We’re not trying to be cool. We’re just trying to be honest.”

But that kind of honesty hasn’t always come easily. He remembers the earlier days of his songwriting — how he’d hide behind cleverness, burying discomfort in metaphor and abstraction. “Any time things got too close for comfort, I’d just throw a weird curveball in the lyrics. It was a way to avoid really dealing with it.”

This new album doesn’t let him off the hook. It’s the first one he’s written sober, without the haze of drugs to mute what he was feeling. “That was the challenge: to sit in the pain, stay with it, and not try to escape.”

It forced him into a different kind of conversation — one he hadn’t been able to have before. Sobriety didn’t just bring clarity in the moment; it unearthed old memories he hadn’t touched in years. “Stuff from 20, 30, 40 years ago just came rushing to the surface.” He found himself speaking, for the first time, to the version of himself he’d long avoided: 11-year-old Brian. “That kid is the most important Brian,” he said. “He’s the one that got me here.”

There’s no neat resolution at the end of this record. He’s still working through it — living with anxiety, OCD, and what he calls a depressive state that hasn’t lifted yet. But there’s something in the way he talks about it now, something that feels steadier, more resolved. “I’m not afraid anymore of being cringey or uncomfortable or too much,” he said. “I don’t care about the backlash. I just care about being honest.”

Brian and I had been talking about how mental health conversations have shifted over time, especially for those of us in our thirties who grew up when therapy was still taboo. For him, the lack of emotional openness in his family added a layer of silence that made everything harder to navigate. “When I got really mentally ill at 19, I didn’t have the language for it,” he says. “My anxiety got so bad, I thought I was going insane. And my family’s response was mostly: ‘snap out of it’ or ‘you think too much.’ I believed that for decades — that I was the weird one. It just became part of my identity.”

We sat with that for a moment — that heavy realization of how formative silence can be. “I think a lot about how different things could’ve been if someone had just said, ‘hey, what you’re feeling is okay,’” he continues. “But then there’s this weird tension because you also hear people say, ‘Well, all that suffering made you who you are.’ And it’s true, in a way. But also... did I really have to suffer that much?”

It’s something I relate to — that strange attachment to suffering, especially when you’re high-functioning. Brian nods. “Yeah. It’s uncomfortable to change any part of yourself that’s been with you for decades — whether that’s a habit or a worldview. Suffering was a huge part of my identity, famously. It’s on my Wikipedia page,” he adds with a laugh. “But I’m trying to move forward. That stuff happened, and I understand why people describe me a certain way. But it doesn’t have to define me anymore. That’s kind of what this record is about.”

There’s something markedly fluid about the new album — not just emotionally, but musically. “Your music has always had this kind of genre-defying quality,” I point out. “But this record feels especially expansive — you can hear classical elements one moment, then something more raw and punchy the next. Did that openness come from the journey you’ve been on?”

“I’ve always felt free musically,” Brian says. “That’s one of the things I’ve liked about BC Camplight — I’ve never really cared about what a scene was doing. I mean, I remember around 2015, everyone started sounding like Tame Impala. And I was like, what’s happening? Why does everything sound exactly the same? I’ve always ignored that stuff and just done what came naturally.”

But with this album, he says the priority was different. “I wanted to focus on the songs. That sounds simple, but I really wanted each one to feel more concise. Some of my older records got a bit too out-there, probably because I was feeling fragile at the time. But with this, the idea was to stay grounded — to stay focused on the mission and the message.”

And it does feel grounded. Even with all the musical twists, there’s a clear emotional core that doesn’t drift. “That makes sense,” he laughs. “Every other record, I was high as fuck. But now, listening back, it really does sound like a guy in a very specific moment, trying to say something very specific.”

That kind of honesty, he hopes, is what people will connect with. “It’s not about trying to sound cool. I hope people feel the message.”

I ask him if he can remember the last time he heard a song that made him feel understood in that way — a song that seemed to know him.

“There’s this track called Jogging by Richard Dawson,” he says. “He sings about really mundane things — going to the chemist, talking to a pharmacist, going for a run, chatting with someone at the bus stop. But in that simplicity, everything he says feels profound. It’s like, man, this guy gets it. Real life isn’t always this big dramatic thing. Sometimes it’s just stubbing your toe in the morning. And that is meaningful.”

We circle back to mental health — not just in life, but in music. I ask him what he wishes more people understood about the relationship between creativity and mental illness.

“I’d love to bury the whole ‘tortured genius’ thing,” he says, without hesitation. “People romanticize it — Brian Wilson, whoever — and there’s this glorification of suffering. But it’s dangerous. It dehumanizes people. Most people living with serious mental illness don’t get to turn it into music. And even for those of us who do, that suffering shouldn’t be the story. I’ve seen that label written about me, and at first, I thought it was kind of cool. But it’s not. It’s not true, and it’s not cool.”

“I grew up with this anxiety,” I told him. “Thinking I wasn’t going to succeed in life because I wasn’t suffering enough. And I’m thirty-three now, still trying to untangle that. Why was suffering so glorified? Like, you’ve overcome all this pain and now you’re talented—and that somehow makes it valid? But for me, it just took so much away.”

Brian leaned in, curious. “Why do you think you thought you needed to suffer? Was it something from when you were younger?”

“I think it was everything I saw in the media,” I said. “Every TV show had a sob story—someone loses their house, or grows up as an orphan, but now they’re incredible. I started to think maybe I needed to create my own suffering to deserve success. That mentality really stuck with me. I don’t know if younger generations still grow up like that. But like you were saying earlier, it’s important to step back and look at it.”

Brian nodded. “There is real, circumstantial suffering, of course—people have accidents, lose things, get sick. But I think the real source of suffering is internal. You can have everything on paper and still be wrecked by anxiety. Even just sitting there worrying that you’re not anxious enough—that’s such a spin cycle.”

I laughed—painfully familiar. “It’s like I’m my worst enemy and my best friend at the same time.”

He understood that completely. “I’ve definitely gone through periods where I worried I was manufacturing my own misery. Like, a few of my albums came out right after something awful happened. So then I’d start thinking—am I subconsciously sabotaging myself just to write the next one? Like surely I can make a great record without getting deported or losing family…”

I nodded again. “Yeah. I get that.”

“For certain people,” Brian said, “the brain will always find a way to doubt itself.”

There’s a push-pull tension in his work—always has been. Emotional honesty wrapped in something lush or strange or whimsical. So I asked: does humor still feel like a survival tool? Or is it something else now?

“One thing I really enjoy about my writing,” he said, “is trying to encapsulate the entire human experience. I’d be utterly bored with myself if I wrote sad songs that sounded sad and made people feel bad for me. I don’t want pity. I want people to feel that I’m human. And humans are funny. We go through terrible things, and then we say something ridiculous. Or laugh at the wrong time.”

Even if it’s cost him a bigger audience, he stands by that choice. “I like to show the full range. And part of that is being funny. Sometimes you’re listening to something heartbreaking and then the line makes you laugh—and suddenly, you remember it’s a real person talking. Not a Radio One ballad. Not a ‘my life is awful, come back to me’ type thing.”

He doesn’t necessarily do it as a defense mechanism. “It’s just how I am. Humor’s always been part of how I remind myself—and other people—that I’m human.”

So what’s changed, then? What’s he leaving behind with this album—and what’s coming with him?

“I hope I’m leaving behind hurting myself,” he said. “I’m in this space now where I’m lucky not to be tied to drugs, or getting wrecked all the time, or just making destructive choices. But now that all that’s gone, I’m trying to figure out what parts of myself I still want to carry forward.”

Some of it’s hard to let go. “Sometimes I’ll pick up a piece of myself and think—oh, shit, that’s old Brian. And it’s hard to drop it. But the process of making records helps. It helps me decide: okay, I can’t afford to drag this with me. Or—this part still has something to offer.”

He paused. “The biggest thing I’m bringing forward is a kind of pride. I’ve owned some of the things that happened to me as a kid. And now I know I don’t have to run from them anymore. That’s big.”

Owning those memories has given him something else, too: confidence. “If I can face those things, then I probably can face anything else. That’s the Brian I want to take with me. And I’d really prefer to leave the self-saboteur behind.”

I told him I could relate. And I could.

Before wrapping up, I asked one last question: the album feels cinematic. If it were a film, what scene would play during the final track?

He grinned. “Funny you ask that—because it was kind of made like a film. The first track starts with footsteps walking up to a tent. In my mind, someone’s approaching the protagonist. Then the whole album is the person inside the tent, having a conversation with themselves about a memory.”

He described the final moment. “At the end of the last song, you hear the tent unzip. The protagonist walks toward the sunrise. All those dark memories and voices from earlier in the album—they start to dissipate. You just hear this big major chord. And in my mind, it’s a first-person view: the tent opens, the sun bursts in, you stand up, take a deep breath, and walk straight into the light.”

A perfect closing scene.