Kameron Marlowe Crafts Heartbreaking ‘Sad Songs For the Soul’: ‘It’s a Passion Project’

On Kameron Marlowe’s third Sony Music Nashville album, Sad Songs For the Soul, out Friday (Feb. 21) he’s veered from crafting a standard country project to fashioning a concept album focused on those with shattered hearts.

As he sorted through songs he’d written since signing with Sony Music Nashville in 2020, he realized he had a stack of solid songs—all heartbreak anthems—that he had never put on previous albums.

“They’d kind of been sitting in my music vault for a while,” Marlowe tells Billboard. “I’d want to put ‘em on the projects, but I didn’t want to have too many sad songs on a project. So, I was like, ‘It’d be cool to just have one project where I can put them all together.’”

The Red Light-managed Marlowe acknowledges the inherent stress in releasing a project that is outside the norm of what fans have come to expect but says crafting the project rejuvenated his creative impulses. “It sounds different than my music usually does,” Marlowe says. “It’s more of a passion project for me. I felt like I was getting stomped creatively and I needed to open my mind and produce this a little differently.”

Echoing the raw feelings of heartbreak, the album is stripped back, with sparse snares and cymbals in lieu of a full drumkit. Though the nearly 10-song project centers around pain and disappointment, each song approaches from the topic from a different angle, such as the Kendell Marvel co-write “Dear God.”

Marlowe calls Marvel “one of my favorite writers in Nashville that I’ve gotten to work with,” adding, “We really wanted it to be this conversation between this person and God, just throwing out all your faults and knowing why [an ex-lover] is gone, but praying to God she’ll still give you another shot.”

Elsewhere, “The Basement” feels reminiscent of the rock-infused brand of ‘90s country from artists such as Travis Tritt. “It feels like something he would’ve done back in the day,” Marlowe notes. “Travis is definitely one of my inspirations — I learned a lot of my singing from listening to him.”

He wrote one of the project’s standout tracks, “How’s the Leaving Going,” with Country Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill and lauded songwriter/NSAI Board president Lee Thomas Miller during a songwriter’s camp in Nashville.

“It’s a bit terrifying,” he says of the prospect of writing with Gill. “He’s the sweetest guy in the world, but he’s also insanely talented in so many ways — singing, guitar playing, songwriting. So it was intimidating stepping into that room. I trust myself when I’m writing, but when you are writing with a caliber [of writer] like Vince and Lee, you can question, ‘Is that line going to be all right?’ before you say it out loud. But it was so worth it. We wrote something I think is very beautiful.”

Marlowe also included a blistering, soulful cover of Cam’s 2015 hit “Burning House,” a song Marlowe calls “the coolest heartbreak song I think I’ve ever heard. You can see everything she’s talking about in that song.” It was that decision that set Sad Songs for the Soul in motion, though Marlowe’s initial concept for the album left room to expand on the project.

“The title was actually Sad Songs For the Soul Vol. 1: Heaven and the Bottle,” he says. “It was the full concept, in case I wanted to do a volume two down the road. I still may one day.”

While Marlowe’s grizzled voice and the slate of sad songs glue the project together, Sad Songs For the Soul leans on songs that touch on an array of styles, from rock-tilted anthems, torchy R&B-fueled numbers and gospel-influenced songs. The North Carolina native grew up soaking in the sounds of gospel music in his local church and becoming a worship leader. But by high school he had segued from church songs to rock anthems, starting a band with some local friends.

“I had no idea what I was doing at the time, but my high school teacher was so excited that somebody was playing music,” Marlowe recalls. “He created a class for me and my buddies to rehearse and learn how to put songs together. He would set up shows for us, which was exciting for me because I was learning how to build songs out, build a band and how to play those songs live.”

Marlowe pursued music during a short stint in college but dropped out to work to support his family, serving as an auto parts salesman for General Motors. Throughout, he continued playing music, putting up videos of himself singing cover songs on Instagram. One of those videos — a powerful cover of Chris Stapleton’s “Tennessee Whiskey” — led The Voice to come calling.

“They found me on social media, and — this is terrible that I even had this going on — but back then, I had my phone number in the bio of my [profile], thinking girls might reach out to me. But it ended up turning out to be a good thing, that The Voice found that number and reached out.”

He competed on season 15 of The Voice, singing songs from Hootie & the Blowfish, Waylon Jennings and Bob Marley, and advancing to the top 24 before being eliminated. Encouraged by the competition, he moved to Nashville and quickly found that fans gravitated toward his independently released, solo-written song “Giving You Up,” which led to Marlowe signing with Sony Music Nashville.

In the five years that have elapsed, Marlowe has issued many songs that evince his gale force of a voice, bolstered by an ever-maturing songwriting style. He issued 2022’s We Were Cowboys and 2024’s Keepin’ the Lights On, featuring songs including “Steady Heart” and the Ella Langley collaboration “Strangers.”

“I’ve learned how to persevere through the tough times and I feel like that’s something that I’ve leaned on pretty hard the past couple years, where I’m by no means a massive artist yet,” Marlowe says. “I would love to get there one day, but I’ve really tried to persevere and keep just staying in my lane and not worrying about what other people are doing — just following my path.”

Beyond the new album, the WME-booked Marlowe is opening shows for Parker McCollum and will launch his 2025 Keepin’ the Lights On Tour March 7. Given his nimble voice, it’s possible that path could at some point mean Sad Songs for the Soul could be just the first “passion project” he releases.

“My favorite thing is just to discover new songs,” Marlowe says. “I would love to do a soul kind of record one day or a rock record. But those would all be passion projects for me, because I feel like country music is what I am the most — but I could see a record with maybe some Kings of Leon songs that I love so much.”