Dove Cameron, Emmy-winning actress and West End darling, has made the full jump into music that seems ripped from the core of her being. Her newest hit, “We Belong,” came a year after any other solo releases and was featured on the soundtrack for the young adult film After We Collided. To date, it is her biggest solo single, reaching over 20 million Spotify streams, and for good reason — it shines like an unrefined diamond in the busy plethora of pop songs.
Cameron herself describes the song as one first and foremost about independence: being a whole person yourself, while still knowing your twin flame is out there and longing to be with them. The track, like most of Cameron’s songs, features a production-heavy song relying on electronic elements and a catchy four-chord melody that is sure to get stuck in your head. In her lilting soprano, she uses the pre-chorus to coo out an angsty cliche “Bang, Bang / Think I’m allergic / to every other person / You’re the one / Now I’m certain.”
Thanks to director Luke Narim’s beautifully curated vision, we find this masterful soliloquy of longing immortalized in a corresponding short film, captured in 35 mm film. Cameron is dressed to the nines in a bright pink tulle Oscar De La Renta ball gown, all to just haunt a ’60s-style California mansion. She glides, pouts, and saunters through her own glass palace, even at one point seeing her own face projected onto the retro antenna-clad television set. In low-light, she is wondering of nothing but her lover and checking her phone to see if they’ve texted her back. Stylistically, and this may just be because of our current global pandemic, the choice to have Cameron alone in the house without ever seeing her so-called “lover” is interesting.
Perhaps, it alludes to the fact that she and Thomas Doherty have split up. Perhaps it may also allude to the Instagram caption she shared earlier this year on a photo of her crying, in which she candidly mused about feeling trapped in a public image/social media presence that did not at all affect the person underneath the Disney Channel association. Either way, Cameron shows poise in this big-time hit, and if she continues on a path laden with empathy and authenticity, she is sure to continue her meteoric rise to success. Watch the video below.
