Longitude 2025 – CamrinWatsin: "A new light has been shone on Ireland"

Cameron Watson is taking it easy in his childhood bedroom in Robertsown, Co. Kildare. Despite being in the middle of his post-Australian tour, jet-lag recovery, he’s still kind enough to take the time to show us where the magic happens.

“Monitors and a laptop, that’s me sorted,” he nods.

We’re talking about the music here, obviously. It’s the same station where, under his moniker CamrinWatsin, he cooked up his most well-known track ‘Kisses’.

Released alongside bbyclose and Bl3SS, it went on to be a Top 5 UK hit and has been belted out hundreds of millions of times across the globe, kicking Watson’s fledgling career into overdrive.

“It’s quite surreal what happened with that tune,” he says. “I did not expect it to do the numbers that it did. I knew it was good and catchy, but funny enough, I was actually putting that tune out on the side, because I had my own deal going on with Sony and was focusing on another standalone single at the time.”

Standing upright on his shelf is a yellow Fendi shopping bag, contrasting against the silhouette footballer stickers on the wall. It’s a reminder of how far Watson’s come in a short space of time, having only started producing music three years ago.

“I finished school and was in a trade,” the soon-to-be-23-year-old shares. “I was doing an air conditioning refrigeration apprenticeship. Fifteen hour shifts were a standard thing for me. I’d be coming home and getting straight in the studio.

“I was going into work very tired, but I just loved coming home and making music, it was the best part of the day for me. Eventually I was lucky enough to be able to leave the job and do this full-time.”

Watson cites his father as an early influence, adding that his old man also had a go in the music industry as a hip-hop producer and DJ.

“He showed me the basics of Logic Pro, and he still has all the studio equipment here in the house,” Watson shares. “I’ve always had a massive interest in music because my parents are very musical. I said to myself, ‘I’ll actually have a go at making it’, because I loved the idea of being able to make something for yourself from scratch.

“The hip-hop and dancey stuff that my dad introduced me to, tracks like ‘Need To Feel Loved’ by Reflekt, are what stood out to me. I like to merge rap and dance together when I produce, because they go hand in hand.

“Even though these tunes are going off in clubs and people are having a good time, you can still put a lot of emotion into them.”

Hungry to improve, Watson scoured the internet, clinging on to every morsel of advice he could find.

“What I wanted to learn was very accessible on YouTube,” he explains. “I ended up doing a lot of networking with people and DJs that I found on Soundcloud. I was texting them and getting tips and pointers.

“I’d even go out of my way to go out and meet up with these people and watch what they do. A good friend of mine, Evan McGee, would have shown me a lot about how I should navigate myself when I first started off.”

Jetting across the world to play gigs has brought its own lessons about the industry, and managing himself accordingly.

“Last year was my first proper year touring and I said to myself ‘just get the job done’, because I was still nervous. So it was anything to comfort me, whether that was fast food or a few drinks before the show.

“But this year I’m more focused on going out of the way to get the healthier option. It’s working for me at the moment, I feel good. I’m just trying to change little habits because it really is so easy to fall into bad habits in this industry.”

Was Watson much of a raver during his teenage years?

“No, not really,” he admits. “I’m very to myself. I played Longitude last year and that was my first time being there. I did every single party island last summer and that was the first time I was at any of them.

“Don’t get me wrong, I obviously had my Friday nights out with a few mates, but it was never anything mad. I wasn’t much of a raver or a clubber. I don’t mind staying at home, I’m a gamer at heart.

“I used to play Fortnite competitively. I actually won money in a few of the tournaments. I came top place in the Xbox cup in Europe and all, I was on a bit of a mad one. That’s the first job I thought was going to have – I wanted to have a job in the public eye, and I was convinced at the start it was going to be as a streamer.”

Putting the controller down has obviously worked out. Watson is one of the pacesetters in Ireland’s thriving dance scene, with Robbie G citing the Kildare beatsmith as “the example,” when Hot Press spoke to Belters Only in March.

“This is a conversation I have with a lot of people now, especially in Ireland,” Watson says of the genre’s rise in popularity. “It seems to have started when Belters Only and Jazzy came out with ‘Make Me Feel Good’.

“I think from that moment onward, and the impact that tune had on the Irish and UK charts, a lot more people and labels and companies and whatnot started looking towards Ireland.

“There’s so many big artists starting to emerge from here now and that’s because there’s just a new light has been shone on Ireland as a whole. The scene is constantly growing. Not only did ‘Make Me Feel Good’ open new doors, it’s also after inspiring a lot more of the young lads, myself included.”

“I did listen to Robbie G and Bissett as solo artists before they became Belters Only,” Watson continues. “The big message they put out is that ‘We’re just two Joe Soaps from the area’. And it’s true. It’s a really nice humble approach, but it’s inspiring for people that are in that sort of situation. It’s doable no matter who you are, and that’s the image they’re after portraying to the whole country.”

Watson was flying the flag at this year’s BRIT awards, where ‘Kisses’ was nominated for Song of the Year.

“It was nuts, it felt like one big dream,” he says. “I went from seeing a lot of these people on a screen to being two feet away from me. It was just surreal man, especially being from such a quiet little village in Kildare all the way onto a massive red carpet.”

As a 23-year-old with the world at his disc-spinning fingertips, Watson is well aware of not letting the streaming figures, festival slots and celebrity-laden events get to his head.

“Someone came up to me recently and asked how I was walking up the same street as them, ‘like a normal civilian.’ I turned around and said, ‘I am a normal civilian’. I just happen to make tunes in my bedroom. But to be honest with you, I couldn’t not be grounded, even if I wanted to. It would be taken out of me straight away by my parents. They’re the ones that have got me to where I am.”

CamrinWatsin’s latest single ‘Cry Baby', featuring Evalina, is out now.

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