A love letter to the country song that got me through heartache

By Elena sheppard

August 11, 2015

By Elena sheppard

August 11, 2015

The song is tragic:

I had a dream about a burning house
You were stuck inside I couldn’t get you out.

And I know exactly what I was doing when I first heard it.

For all of July my boyfriend and I were breaking up. It was the type of break up you have when neither person wants to end it, but both people know that now’s just not your time. When Cam’s “Burning House” first came through my headphones, I was walking to his apartment preparing to talk feelings and putting on my emotional armor by way of music. Country music Spotify playlists can be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

I laid beside you and pulled you close.
And the two of us went up in smoke.

I froze when Cam came on, I stopped on the corner of 7th avenue and 12th street in Manhattan and listened to Cam’s delicate voice so full of feeling, I listened to that heartbreak story that managed to peel back all of my armor and hit me right where it really, really hurt.

Love isn’t all that it seems I did you wrong.
I’ll stay with you until this dream is gone.

I stayed on that corner until the song ended, and then I played it again. It wasn’t that every word she was singing applied exactly to my life, it was just that every feeling she was expressing was exactly what I felt. That’s when music is the very best, isn’t it? When it takes all of your emotions, processes them, digests them, and sings them back to you perfectly articulated. As July went on, “Burning House” no longer removed my armor—it became my armor, my heart healer.

I’ve been sleepwalking, been wandering all night,
Trying to take what’s lost and broken and make it right.

I also did my homework. I learned that “Burning House” was off of Cam’s EP “Welcome to Cam Country;” that incredible artists, like Emmylou Harris, are fans; that it was the song that convinced Sony to sign her; and that it’s the fastest-rising country download in iTunes history. I also decided that I needed to talk to her — I wanted to know what the song that meant so much to me meant to the woman who’d written it. I also wanted to thank her.

I’ve been sleepwalking too close to the fire
But it’s the only place that I can hold you tight
In this burning house

When Cam and I connected for an interview she was everything my fan fiction heart had written her to be — generous with her time, her inspiration, her care. When I told her “Burning House” had become the soundtrack to my heartbreak she said, “I’m so so sorry.” She also shared her own heartbreak that inspired the song: a college boyfriend, a break up she always wishes she’d handled better, a dream about a burning house the night before she was supposed to see said ex-boyfriend at a party.

See you at a party and you look the same

She also explained the song as a means of processing the difficulty of breaking up with someone that you still love, “There’s not a Disney movie you can watch that explains what to do when you really love someone but they just aren’t right for you,” she said. I totally understood.

When I asked what lyric hit her the hardest, she came back with one of my favorites:

I can take you back but people don’t ever change.

“It was so honest it scared me,” she said. Going on to say that when her co-writer sang her the line she thought, “we can’t say that out loud.” For me, it is the next lyric in the song that scares me with its honesty:

Wish that we could go back in time
I’d be the one you thought you’d find.

Cam also gave me her own song prescription for heartache: “The Promise,” by Tracy Chapman.

Love isn’t all that it seems I did you wrong.
I’ll stay with you until this dream is gone.

I thanked her and told her I’d keep listening to the song until my heart didn’t hurt anymore. She said exactly what I needed to hear, “I’ll be there.” And she is.