Get to Know Camylio
Interview by Stephanie Nardi
Graphic by Rebekah Witt
Meet Lio Arnfield, better known as Camylio to his 3.4 million followers and fans on Tik Tok, the platform that launched it all for him. Don’t let that fool you though: this artist shows serious musical chops that have come to be compared to the likes of Lewis Capaldi and Dermot Kennedy. With powerful vocals full of emotion, the New York native reaches through the speakers with his relatable lyrics and is able to connect with his fans to make them feel something, a feat he holds in high regard. His authenticity and ability to bare his soul on social media has garnered him an avid following, and now signed to Republic Records, this up-and-coming artist is making a splash with his debut EP all the songs i used to love.
Tell me a little bit about your background. Where did your interest in music come from? Was it something that you always knew you wanted to pursue?
Music was always something I was passionate about in some way. I was always an avid consumer of music and when I was eight, I did the classic "guitar players are cool, so I'm going to get a guitar,” but then it sat in the corner of the room for a couple of years. I was always a sports kid growing up, but when I got to high school, I wasn't terrible at playing guitar anymore. I was getting into a lot of the Ed Sheeran stuff because I was like, "He’s so dope, and he plays guitar, and it's like slightly more complicated in his chords, I'm gonna learn how to play one of his songs.” I learned how to play "Small Bump" by Ed Sheeran, just the guitar intro from his first album. I put it on this private Instagram as just a quick 30 second video, and in the last five seconds, I sang the first words of the first verse, and that was the start of everything. The 30 people on that account just hyped me up. They're like, "Yo, where’d this voice come from? I can't believe you've been holding out on us all this time for as long as we've known you.” It turned into singing covers on that account then. I start singing at parties the following summer. I'm like 15, and videos of me singing at a campfire gets sent around, and I start working with local people. It was a weird transition. Like I said, I was a sports kid and college-bound. I was going for it seven days a week, and my junior year of high school after all this comes together, I've been essentially learning how to write and produce for a year as a result of the local scene and my local area. I walked away from all the varsity spots, all the college recruiters, and I was like, "I'm gonna go make beats in my bedroom, with no following.” I guess it's always been there in some way, but it wasn't really the focus until I was late into high school, and I just kind of took a leap of faith. I realized I just enjoy doing this more than anything else. At that point, the dream was very much to be a producer/writer. I was like, “This social media stuff is just not for me. I don't want to push myself, I don't want to be in front of a camera,” so I just start pushing demos on SoundCloud and Spotify my senior year of high school.
Fast forward to last November, that's where my story becomes more fun in the artist sense. At that point, I was a sophomore in college. I'm sitting in this 8:30 Zoom lecture, as boring as it can possibly be, but with one of the most chill, awesome professors ever. The reason that's important is because one of my friends chimes in at the end of class, the dead time where we're just waiting for the clock to run out so we can leave, and he's like, "Lio makes music, Lio should play stuff for everyone on screen share.” And I'm like, "Dude, for real? That's ridiculous.” It's a core class. It's a pretty big lecture. There are like 80 kids in the Zoom call and all my friends that I'll see. I run with it though. First, I play something without my voice or writing, just something I produced for somebody else, and they love it. Then some of my closer friends are like, "This kid's voice is crazy. He's holding out on you. He should play stuff that he's written with his voice on.” I'm anxious and nervous, but I played them a vocal demo, and it became just the craziest day of my life. I got like 400 text messages that day because people were taking videos of the Zoom call and sending it to their friends and in their group chats and those people were hitting me up. Nothing went internet viral, no one posted it on TikTok or anything at the time, but it was a Friday so we’re all going out for the weekend. During that weekend, I had my 15 seconds of fame on campus for sure. People would be like "Oh my God, you're the music kid! You did something in a class.” By the next weekend though, everyone had forgotten I existed. It was Black Friday last year, and I call my management and I was like, "Camylio artist project. Let's just put my demos out, I'll do it. I know it's hard, but I'll be the face of it.”
You were saying you initially wanted to be more on the production/writer side of things rather than the actual artist and the face behind the song. Was it that moment in the Zoom class that flipped that switch for you?
Being the face of anything is scary, especially when these songs are so personal and are real stories. I think it was just a confidence thing. Being able to bare your soul is incredibly scary, especially when you're not totally established. At that point, the TikTok thing hadn't happened. You don't have anything to stand on to be like, “Yeah, I'm good at this, I can be confident and put my art out into the world and feel like I'm good at what I do.”’That [Zoom class] was the moment when it was all my peers, all the people that, if I'm being honest, are the people you want to like you the most. You live with them in college and see them constantly, and it was just this collective "Why are you wasting this? Why are you not pursuing your dream? You're actually good at this.” I was an accounting student, of all things, and they were like "Why are you getting a CPA and trying to work a suit job when you can do this, and it’s something you seem to be so passionate about?” It was really in that moment and the weekend that followed with people just organically coming up to me and being like, "Your stories are fucking awesome, and you should at least give it a try.” You don't want to wake up one day and think you maybe could have tried to make it work but just never did. Honestly, even to this day, I don't know that I've felt such a collective wave of support from my closest peers and the people who I really know in real life and have known me for so long. Yeah, that was the turning point.
You got your start on TikTok, which is a testament to how powerful that app can be when it comes to launching careers. Now that you’re signed to a record label though, have you found it difficult to not be just seen as just “that guy on Tik Tok who has an amazing voice” to a full-blown artist pursuing music as a career?
I definitely felt that way in the very beginning. I think that's the initial gut reaction because you don't want to be pigeonholed or labeled. Honestly, as we started releasing music though, the biggest thing that changed my perspective on that is the fact that TikTok has truly given me this, but I'm not a TikTok artist. I'm an artist that happens to be sharing and connecting with people through TikTok as a medium. In the same way that I don't think Shawn Mendes would ever say he hates Vine, I truly feel the same way about TikTok. It is a platform for me to connect with people and has allowed me to do just that. I could not be more grateful for it because it spreads to other platforms. I get DMs where people will tell me they found me on Tik Tok, and then they went and listened to my songs and it helped them get through certain things. One day, I hope the TikTok label will disappear in the same way the Vine label did for Shawn and the YouTube label did for Justin and Charlie Puth, but for right now, TikTok continues to allow me to matter in some way, or at least allows the songs to matter to people, and helps me spread the word. I will never be ungrateful for a platform that's really given me the opportunity to do that.
Social media is an integral part of how people connect with you and your music. With that, do you find it challenging to find a balance between being present and sharing content or having people constantly commenting about what they like and don't like?
I think anyone who says anything else is not being entirely honest. I think that is the reality of the life that we live. You can get a million comments saying the nicest of things, but the two comments that tear you apart will absolutely make you think about them for the rest of the week. Social media definitely causes anxiety. You don't have to be an influencer to know that. You just have to be anybody putting anything out for all your peers to decide to like it or not. At the same time, "it is what you make it" is my way of viewing it, in the same way that I can never be ungrateful to be called a Tik Tok artist. You definitely make a choice at the end of every day, whether you're going to let the million nice comments win or the two bad comments win. I take stock of that and just realize that there are so many more awesome comments, there are so many more good moments than there ever are bad that I wouldn't feel good, I would feel like I was being a bit of a brat, personally, if I couldn't see the bright side. No matter what you do, whether you're singing on the street or you're on TikTok, there's always going to be somebody having a bad day and ends up saying something not so nice. I'm just grateful that the majority of my interactions remain positive, and I'm still getting a chance to share my art with way more people than I was a year ago.
Your voice and your sound have been compared to pretty heavy hitters in the music industry like Dermot Kennedy, Shawn Mendes, and Lewis Capaldi. Does that add an extra level of pressure to meet those comparisons, or does it more so inspire you to prove that those comparisons right?
I think a healthy amount of pressure is always the best way to find your best self. Those artists are people I listened to. They live in my playlists and are people I dreamed of working with when I was just wanting to be a writer/producer; I still do. What I will say is that the tying thread through all of those people is that they are incredibly honest. All of their songs are vulnerable, and their voices carry that and really express that. When I think about those comparisons, and I think about who I want to be, it's more about wanting to also be the type of artist who is just as real and honest. For example, I'll absolutely lean into the Lewis comparison because there was a moment in 2019 when I was a freshman in college, and I heard “bruises” for the first time. I was going through some stuff, and I'll never hear that song and not be in my freshman dorm, taking it in if I close my eyes. I think that's something to aspire to. I think, every time you write a song, you should be aiming to write for that kid or that person who could possibly be listening and seeing themselves in your songs. There's always going to be as much pressure you choose to put on yourself, but I think every artist should have the pressure of being honest and using their voice to convey emotion and make songs that matter to people.
Tell me a little about your EP. How did that come to be?
As soon as the insanity of this year settled, it was really about putting out music. That first wave of sessions, back in February, was where “black and white” and “love and hate” came from, “foolish” was written around April, and the whole project was wrapped in May. It's insane to think that some of my first proper sessions with real songwriters that I've been around for so long led to such special songs. It wasn't until much later on that I realized I was making a cohesive project. To me, the EP is an introduction and a collection of stories of who I've been for the past three years. The most pressing thing on my mind is this story that happened to me, and that turns into “love and hate.” Then you go into another room later in the week, and you tell another story and that becomes “black and white.” I truly love how organically it came together and the fact that I can look back on it and find a storyline that feeds through all of them. All of that is sort of done in retrospect, too, because the truth of it is that it started with just me talking about my feelings and the stories I had to tell.
The best way I can describe this is that it's kind of a story of a failing relationship. I've been through a couple in my life, and I can't say it's about one particularly. It's just a collection of my experiences to this point, but the track order was intentional.
“bones”: This is about being in a state of denial. You don't want to believe that things are falling apart and even consider the idea that you might one day walk away and go back to being strangers. It's the feeling of “I will do anything for you and you can put the weight of the world on my shoulders and these bones won't break.”
"unbreak": You've been playing “bones” on repeat for a couple of weeks and truly trying to buy into that philosophy, and I feel like this is the next stage of it. There's a melancholy to it. You're still in denial, but it's no longer this adrenaline-filled “We can do it.” You just don't want to talk about it. It's the elephant in the room. You don't want to acknowledge it, and you're still trying to convince. You're still trying to believe. At the end of the day, all you want to say to somebody is "If only I could fix this. If only I could be more than me, and I could be exactly what you needed.”
“black and white”: This is the turning point. “bones” and “unbreak” are the lead-up with the adrenaline and the melancholy and the denial. With the first chorus [of this song], "we went from gray to black and white,” it is the breakup. It is the moment of true separation where you wake up the next day, and you don't feel like yourself because you got so used to being you with that other person.
“love and hate”: No matter how better off you are or how toxic it was, your friends come to you and are like, "You’re good, man, we're gonna take you out and it's gonna be great.” All you want to do is just lay in bed for like three days and just binge-watch feel-good Hallmark movies or whatever it is and do nothing? That's “love” and “hate.” This was inspired by a very real experience. I definitely did my fair share of partying in college, but there was a time right before I decided to come home that I was getting back into really being passionate about music. It'd be like a Friday or Saturday night and my friends would be going out, but I hadn't finished the track I was working on. I'm still up until three in the morning because I'm working, and I get a text message. There's nothing worse because you're entirely sober. You're not out partying and having fun yourself, you're working. You get that message knowing that, in my case, she was out, and you just read that message and your heart sinks through your chest. That's where that chorus came from. That was the inspiration for the chorus, by all means, and then the verses were written in a separate conversation, but about the same kind of relationship. I remember that first verse more than anything. Molly asked something like, "Have you ever had that thing where things just aren't the same after a relationship?" I told her about how the way I used to flirt with my ex in the very beginning was we'd send each other playlists. We'd share music and go back and forth, and now I fucking hate those songs. I cannot listen to a single one. I mean, it's gotten better as time has gone on, but there are still songs that I can't listen to. Molly is just a brilliant mind, she's awesome, and after I told that story, she said, "It’s almost like you're saying I hate all the songs I used to love," and I was like, "That’s brilliant.”
“sometimes”: This is about very similar situations as “unbreak,” where you just care about somebody so much, and the most heartbreaking thing is knowing that it's not enough because it's not about you. That's the biggest lesson as you grow up and the toughest pill to swallow: knowing that sometimes love just isn't enough. “Sometimes” is that moment when you’re finally in enough of a headspace where you can maturely digest the situation and become a better person going forward.
“foolish”: This whole EP is a collection of experiences from different relationships and a lot of them are centered around a very nostalgic relationship of mine. I understand why we went different ways, it was for the best and life just changed. This is about a relationship that I got cheated on in, so not quite as nostalgic. As far as the storyline [with the EP], it’s almost like 6 months later, you find something out and see a picture that’s timestamped from before. The chorus of that song kind of relates to the aftermath of it. You just feel so dumb because, in your heart of hearts, you know when something is going on. You either choose to listen to that voice or you entirely throw that voice away as far as possible and avoid it. I always do the second one, unfortunately. You feel foolish, you feel stupid because you’re the one who chose to stay.
I think the biggest thing is like you said I come from the world of TikTok where people experience seeing me sing for a couple seconds, and I think that’s great. I love that people can fall in love with my voice and care enough to find out more. As I go forward though, I really want people to know me. I feel like I have enough of a story to tell, I want them to feel like I’m their best friend down the block, the kid that they can go listen to and know that somebody else has experienced something similar. The toughest part about that though is the way to achieve that. You have to be vulnerable. You have to be you. You have to put yourself out there and let the world pick you apart a little bit. I think this EP is the first step of doing that, the first step of being saying “Here’s me, unapologetically, and I hope you like it.”
What has this EP taught you as an artist? What’s your biggest takeaway from all of it?
You can’t cheat the system when it comes to doing something real. You can’t throw something together in the way that you think it’s supposed to go and have a song that resonates. These songs went through multiple revisions from the lyrics to eventually the production, and the mixes—figuring out how it was going to be put out. Even in the TikTok teasing game, my mom says this to me all the time, “You look like you don’t believe what you’re singing in that video, you need to redo that. You look fake, it just doesn’t resonate.” That’s something that I realized: you might be able to convince one or two people, but the public and social media listeners can weed through and absolutely tell when you’re being genuine and when you’re not. You do yourself a favor by not trying to think that you’re smarter than the world. As soon as you truly start to be honest and expose yourself, good, bad, or whatever, that’s when things will work. You can’t be what anybody wants you to be; you have to be yourself because no one’s going to believe anything else anyway.
Camylio’s EP all the songs i used to love is available everywhere and we definitely recommend giving it a listen. We know this is only the start for this talented artist and we can’t wait to see what’s next. Keep up to date with all things Camylio by following him on his Instagram, Twitter, and of course TikTok.