Editor’s Note: Corrin Campbell is one that we want to personally thank for her service to the United States. As a combat veteran of the 1st Cavalry Division of the United States Army, Corrin Campbell rose to prominence as part of a unique recruiting initiative that saw her performing alongside the likes of Toby Keith and Ted Nugent, and before you knew it, CNN was featuring her and she also started to share the stage with hard rock bands A Day To Remember and Black Veil Brides. Corrin Campbell is especially passionate about mental health awareness and she was so open to discuss this topic with Madness To Creation. She will be releasing two singles every month with the album coming out in 2021 entitled “Greatest Hits Dual Disc”. In this double album, you will hear remix versions of songs and cinematic versions of songs. In this interview with Madness To Creation, Corrin Campbell touches on the upcoming release, along with mental health awareness and coping with the Covid-19 pandemic, and impacting that fan with the blue hair. Fans can find Corrin Campbell at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/CorrinCampbell
www.twitter.com/corrincampbell
www.instagram.com/corrincampbell
Madness To Creation: Hi Corrin, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today! How are you holding up through this Covid-19 pandemic?
Corrin: You know, about as well as anybody, I have found a couple of hobbies and things to do, It’s funny because of the way that this album is rolling out, with two singles every month for nine months, and the big album at the end, I wasn’t really going to tour until the end anyway, so it hasn’t really impacted that part all that much, and my cat is great, she keeps me company, so I’m kind of an introvert anyways, I like to do things inside anyhow, so it’s been okay for me.
Madness To Creation: Us introverts have been training our whole lives for this, right?
Corrin: Exactly!
Madness To Creation: You mentioned that you’re releasing two singles per month, was this due to you altering due to Covid-19 pandemic, or is this something that you’ve planned this whole time?
Corrin: No, I’ve planned this the whole time because the release schedule is neither of the album order of either the cinematic disc or the remix disc, so I wanted a chance to be able to show off the sister tracks and how they relate to each other at the same time, and having people look at one next to the other, so I thought it would be kind of fun to do that if the singles rolled anyway, and just kind of roll it out in a more leisurely fashion, so I actually planned on doing that in the first place, so it just kind of worked out.
Madness To Creation: That’s a really good strategy, so you mentioned that your dual disc album is both cinematic and remix, is that to portray your different influences?
Corrin: Yeah, part of it was coming out of this army sponsorship that I’ve been involved in for the last six years, and I really wanted to package these songs with my own voice on them, they were kind of re-released by the army and there was that connection to that whole thing, so I really just wanted my kids to sing songs to have their own voice and also I think it’s really important to know that not just artists, but every human on the planet have more facets to them than the one thing that they may be known for and I think we can kind of learn that about someone else and more about each other, the world just looks better that we can diversify our thinking about who we are on the inside and how many facets that there are in our existence, so I did grow up being a cellist as a kid and I’m also obsessed with electronic music in general especially progressive house and future bass kind of stuff and both of those kind of evolved into this. How exciting is it to have all of the same recordings on them and I just wanted to do something different, so that’s what ended up happening.
Madness To Creation: I also love house music, if you could do voiceovers for any electronic artist, who would you want to collaborate with?
Corrin: Bassnectar and part of the reason why I love Bassnectar so much is because it’s so atmospheric, there’s so much stuff going on at one time and there are calls and responses and the motifs that he carries through in a tune, it’s just incredible, so I’ve always been in awe of how much goes into his stuff, there’s so many great electronic artists, but Bassnectar is my number one obsession.
Madness To Creation: Have you thought about venturing off into the house music world?
Corrin: It’s just the type of music that I love, I’m the type of music listener that gets really fixated on a certain artist and I’ll spend months obsessing and going back into their discography and I’ll just listen on repeat, so he has so much of a catalog that I haven’t really been able to do that with him, and I really love his older stuff before he went commercial, I love his older orchestrations, I’m also a big fan of M4Sonic, he may not be as well known but he’s from Australia and he’s just incredible, so I kind of dive into it more than just an artist focus than anything else.
Madness To Creation: I checked out the cinematic version of the song “Find Your Way”, can you take us into that song and what message you want to convey to the listener?
Corrin: I chose this one for the first single to be released as well because it was actually written about ten or 11 years ago because I was just kind of talking to myself and it almost ended up being prophetic because I was saying to myself, “get out of your own head, you’ve got all these choices in life, decide to be who you are and be that person”, and ten years later I’m finally releasing this album and getting that feeling back because it’s so much later, and I think we think that about ourselves in life, because I’m thinking “in five years, I’ll have it figured out”, then five years comes and you’re thinking, “in five years, I’ll have it figured out” and I think the point is that we never necessarily fully figure it out, but I do feel that I have found a stronghold, especially recently with this current project, so I love how almost ironic it is that I wrote this almost ten years ago and here I am feeling kind of fulfilled in terms of what that song was asking of me.
Madness To Creation: Would you say that mental health and empowerment are prevalent topics in your songwriting?
Corrin: Definitely! There are many songs written about me or friends that I’m watching them go through something. I’ve always been sensitive about mental health, I’ve had a lot of friends that have suffered through depression or that I’ve suffered with that myself and even bipolar disorder which I’m being treated for, and I think it’s just really important that we are self-aware and aware of others. I think if we can be more gracious about what people might be struggling with even if they’ve never been diagnosed with anything medically, but we need to understand that our brains are super complex and sometimes we may think that things make sense and sometimes we convince ourselves that they don’t. The more that we can learn that the better we can coexist and enjoy this life and not take things so crazy, heavy and personal and just try to be there for each other.
Madness To Creation: Have you had anybody come up to you after your performance and just say “thanks, that song really helped me get through this”?
Corrin: Yeah! When I was doing the gig with the army, I played in high schools a lot, it was in auditoriums, so there was a lot of people and we didn’t make that much of a connection immediately after the show because the most assertive persons were the ones that were going to come up first right, and people like me who are introverts, they aren’t going to come up to me in person, so a lot of them happened on DMs on IG afterwards, where through direct messaging, and they’d be like, “I’m going through this thing”, and one time I was playing at a school and there was this girl who had bright blue hair, which I didn’t have at the time have bright blue hair but I wanted to, so I was kind of shouted her out as I was walking around out in the audience and I was like, “I love her hair” in front of everybody and her guidance counselor came up to me after the show and was like, “that girl hasn’t been coming to school in the past two weeks and this was her first day and she come back and she was having a lot of trouble at home and it just made her day that you said something to her”, and she messaged me later and was like, “Look, I really appreciate you saying something because everybody makes fun of me for my hair and it’s really frustrating because I just want to express myself”, and we just had this whole great conversation about how she just been struggling and she just needed somebody to listen, and talk to her parents about it, so it was one of those things where if we can just figure how we can be there for each other whenever there is a need, whether it’s at a show or whether it’s online in our communities, it’s amazing how we can change someone’s life for that day or for days in the future.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of online, have you had to adjust your social media accounts due to this Covid-19 pandemic?
Corrin: I find myself doing a lot more direct messaging because it can be a confusing time to be marketing things, you become really concerned about being tone deaf or being too flippant or too sensitive but at the same time you don’t want to be depressing, I think a lot of us artists are trying to balance it all, you know trying to be a positive light and influence on people’s day if they want it, but I also don’t want to not talk about what is happening because it is happening and people are struggling emotionally with it. I think that there is a balance there and I think it’s much easier to do in DM’s instead of through a post because you’re already posting something that people are afraid to comment on because people will jump all over opinions and comments, I don’t want to have any battle on any of my social comments, so I just end up reaching out and talking to people directly and I’d rather just talk about it in a good way or a bad way whatever you need to do with it.
Madness To Creation: What’s next for Corrin Campbell?
Corrin: The singles are coming out over the next year, the album comes out in January. I’ll be having a membership area coming soon, for like a dollar on up there will be like pre-versions of songs and they’ll be getting early access, if anyone is interested they can go to www.corrincampbell.com , but I’m also excited to plan along with a “Greatest Hits” record, they can get their next album queued up, so my plan is to roll through this “Greatest Hits” period and have a rock album follow it very quickly in compared to how albums are usually released, so there’s a little bit of a balance there, I’m promoting this one but also writing and producing the next album.
Check out the “Bad One” remix of “Find Your Way” below:
