The Essentials: Dove Cameron gets vulnerable on 'Alchemical.' Here are her writing musts

In a new series, USA TODAY's The Essentials, celebrities share what fuels their lives. We're kicking off with Dove Cameron, Meg Ryan, Usher and Ariana DeBose.

Some may call it a dark side, but Dove Cameron is shining within the shadows of her truth.

The teen actress-turned-singer became the resident villainess of pop when her song "Boyfriend," an electro-tinged kiss-off about charming a man's girlfriend, earned her a Top 20 entry on the Billboard Hot 100 and best new artist honors at the MTV Video Music Awards and American Music Awards in 2022.

And while the song championed Cameron as an emerging queer icon, its success brought an unprecedented level of scrutiny to her sexuality.

"I never thought it was going to be a hit, and then when it took off, I was so scared that it was so vulnerable," Cameron says. "It felt like everybody was in my living room interviewing me about my sexuality and my orientation, and it was just a very, very public way to have people see me as something that they didn't know that I was."

Cameron channels this bold vulnerability on her debut album "Alchemical Vol. 1" (out now). Cameron describes the album, the first half of a two-part LP, as a prequel paying tribute to the transformative, intimate tales of her life's journey.

"It's almost like when you're in a relationship and you're first starting to date someone," Cameron says. "It's magical and it's wonderful, and you're in the honeymoon phase, and then you have to go, 'OK, wait a minute. Let me go back and show you all the ugly stuff so that you can see me fully, and then we'll build from there.'"

These are Cameron's songwriting essentials:

Dove Cameron's 'huge backpack' of writing books

Whether she's mining heartache on "Sand" and "Fragile Things" or exploring the mortality of grief on "Still," Cameron gets inspiration for much of her sonic confessions from the stack of writing books she lugs around in a "huge backpack," which includes her emotional scrapbook: a journal.

"It's really essential for me to catalog everything, record everything, stay present with everything that's going on."

Cameron also stays present with her lyrics book and poetry book, the latter of which contains a collection of Cameron's personal poems. The "Breakfast" singer says much of "Alchemical Vol. 1" is sourced from her poetry book excerpts, which often parallel the passages she writes in her lyrics book.

Dove Cameron can't get enough of this American poet

Cameron's lifelong love of poetry was instilled by mother Bonnie J. Wallace, an author and entrepreneur.

Cameron says she's a fan of the visual storytelling of Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Jack Gilbert, who wrote "The Great Fires" and "Refusing Heaven." She carries his work in her writing backpack, too.

"He's telling these super specific stories about his life and the loss of his wife and his time in grief and all of these things that I'll never relate to, but because it's so specific I do relate to it," Cameron says. "I love to read poetry that feels so human that I'm reminded that we are eternal because all of these experiences are so varied and so many that it's actually universal."

How physicality spurs Dove Cameron's songwriting

Cameron says physical movement like stretching helps her better connect to her inner voice.

"You'll almost always find me in the studio barefoot and contorted into some weird position. When I tap into my body, that's when I find the thing that I'm afraid to say."

Cameron also swears by the creativity of being on the go, whether it's "folding laundry, stretching, doing my skincare."

"When I'm doing something else is when lyrics will just come to me: first lyric, second lyric, third lyric, everything in a rhyme. And then in one month's time, that's the verse of the new song."

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