New Video: Brittany Campbell Teams Up with Steph.fm on Atmospheric, Soulful “CRY BABY”

Brittany Campbell is a Flatbush, Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, animator, actor and activist. Raised by a Jamaican family, Campbell grew up on between dancehall sound systems, Metropolitan Opera rehearsals and an early obsession with atmosphere, emotion and performance. Years later, after moving through jazz circles, a pop deal with Sony, self-production, touring with Hamilton, and a relationship that would completely alter her creative life, Campbell emerged with a sound rooted in live soul, distorted longing, spiritual intimacy and late-night confession.

The Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter signed to Warner Chappell Music/Facet House, co-writing music for Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies alongside Justin Tranter, and collaborated with Billy Porter, Grace VanderWaal and Baby Tate. Her work has received praise from Billboard, NPR, Ladygunn and Bandcamp — with Ladygunn describing her sound and work as “the future of soul.”

Campbell’s sophomore album LMRNCE (an acronym for Love Me Right Now Completely Entirely) is slated for a January 7, 2027 release. LMRNCE is the follow-up to 2018’s Stay Gold and acts as a culmination of her creative endeavors of the past few years. Residing in alternative R&B, soul and “rockifled soul,” the album’s material journeys through the recurring patterns of love, heartbreak, loss, escapism and desire throughout Campbell’s life, identity the thread connecting them all as limerence. Rather than seeking resolution, the album sees Campbell reflecting on all the ways that love, fantasy, music and dreaming can become a means of escaping the harsh realities of our lives.

“It took me a long time to understand what this album was actually about,” Campbell explains. “For a while, I thought it was about heartbreak, or some configuration of the major loves of my life. But toward the end of writing it, I realized there was a pattern underneath all of it — the grief of losing my mother, breakups, loneliness, sex, obsession, devotion, resentment, escapism, and even the way I experience music and art. That pattern was limerence.”
 
She continues, “‘LMRNCE’ became less about resolving those things and more like a map of me recognizing the way I repeatedly use love, fantasy, music, and dreaming as a kind of deus ex machina — a place to disappear into when reality becomes unbearable.”

“LMRNCE is probably the most honest thing I’ve ever made,” Campbell says.“Ever since I first heard Joni Mitchell’s Blue’ I’ve wanted to make something that felt that emotionally exposed.” The result is an album specifically for lovers, weirdos, dreamers, people who feel too much, people who hold grudges, and people who keep chasing the dream even after they know better. So if you’re a hopeless romantic, this album may be for y’all.

The album’s latest single “CRY BABY” feat. Steph.fm is a lush tune, driven by a soulful R&B-meets-trap beat and Steph.fm’s atmospheric and expressive guitar beneath Campbell’s silky delivery. “CRY BABY” showcases Campbell’s earnest, lived-in lyricism while capturing the tension between desperately wanting to protect yourself from the seemingly inevitable heartbreak and struggling to care a bit less. Thematically, the song explores the complexities of falling for someone’s potential, only to face the disappointment of reality falling short.

“I’m a little embarrassed to talk about ‘CRY BABY’,” Campbell admits. “The whole album, LMRNCE, is about falling in love with fantasy and potential, and I wrote ‘CRY BABY’ at a moment when that bubble burst. All of a sudden, loving someone who felt out of reach wasn’t all that fun anymore.”
 
She continues, “I wrote it shortly after coming home from tour and feeling a lot of distance in my relationship. I was foolishly bouncing between anxious and avoidant attachment while desperately wishing I could just become emotionally untouchable. Sometimes I really wish I could be that girl who doesn’t care, but when I’m in love, it just doesn’t really work that way for me. ‘CRY BABY’ is me pouting about that.”
 
“It also took me a while to figure out what the song was missing. I tried different versions of a feature, but nothing really made sense until Steph.fm. She’s genuinely one of my favorite musicians and guitarists out right now, and I realized the song didn’t need any more words – it needed a feeling and an atmosphere. That’s exactly what Steph brought to it. I almost don’t think of her as just a featured artist on the song; she feels like my co-painter of the whole feeling.”

The official visualizer features Campbell’s gorgeous, line animation.

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