CHARLS: HEARTBREAK LOOKS GOOD ON ME

Words by Martyna Rozenbajgier

Heartbreak has a funny way of making you feel like you’ve lost everything, only to realise somewhere down the line that you’ve found yourself again. For CHARLS, that process became an album.

Heartbreak Looks Good On Me was written in the middle of it all – before there was any distance from the relationships, the anger or the confusion that inspired it. Now, listening back from a very different place, CHARLS can hear exactly who she was at the time. “No filter, sometimes not fully rational and a bit messy,” she says. “But it’s raw and real.”

It’s that honesty that runs through the record. There’s anger, obviously, but there’s also humour, confidence and the feeling of someone slowly putting themselves back together. After moving to London, discovering CrossFit and making much of the album with her best mate in the basement of a North London carpet shop, what began as “surely the worst year” became something much more transformative.

We caught up with CHARLS to talk about writing while heartbroken, finding her backbone again, screaming about cheating exes at gigs and becoming the most herself she’s felt in years.

Martyna: “Heartbreak Looks Good On Me” was written while you were actually going through the heartbreak. Did you approach songwriting differently when you weren’t writing with the benefit of hindsight?

CHARLS: Oh god, yeah. This is actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently when listening to the songs. I’m in such a vastly different place in my life now and there are certain lyrics that wouldn’t reflect my outlook anymore if I was to write the same songs today.

That’s what makes this body of work special to me though, it’s a capsule of really intense emotions bottled up in real time. No filter, sometimes not fully rational and a bit messy. But it’s raw and real. I do think that’s my favourite way to write though; fully fuelled by emotion, even if it is a bit ugly.

M: The title “Heartbreak Looks Good On Me” feels both vulnerable and defiant. When did heartbreak start to feel like something you could reclaim rather than something that defined you?

C: Honestly, quite quickly. The process of writing the album was like spinning my hurt into gold. The more songs into the process we got, the more it felt like I was taking control of the narrative.

In that same time, I moved to London and discovered CrossFit. I was building a brand new life, making so many new friends and quite literally rebuilding myself muscle fibre by muscle fibre. What started out as surely the worst year, ended up being transformative and incredible.

M:  There’s a lot of anger in “Paranoid Heart”. Do you think anger is underrated as a songwriting emotion?

YES. What is more liberating to scream at the top of your lungs at a concert than calling out your cheating ex with a load of other people who have been through similar experiences to you?

The song becomes a vehicle for people to exorcise their demons and channelling that anger in the songwriting process brings out impact and drama which I loooove.

M: You wrote “Paranoid Heart” with Sarah Close after discovering you’d both experienced similar forms of betrayal. What did having another person in the room who immediately understood that feeling bring to the song?

C: When you write with someone who fully gets what you’re saying you end up finishing each other’s sentences. The message doesn’t get diluted at all and you deliver the truest and most authentic version of the story.

It also made it so fun! Being like “I don’t know if I should say this but….” And the other person going “SAY IT!”.

M: You’ve said that seeing yourself looking confident in the photos from your post-breakup shoot sparked the title track. There’s something really interesting about that moment of seeing yourself differently. How important was that realisation to the album as a whole?

C: Instrumental. Recognising that I’d got my spark back almost instantaneously made it possible to keep one foot firmly in the clouds when I was writing the music. Even the saddest songs have a sprinkling of hope because I was so certain that it was all for the best.

M: You made much of the album with your best mate in the basement of a carpet shop in North London. What did that strange little environment give you that a more conventional studio might not have?

C: It felt like home. It felt like you could never do or say anything wrong. Nothing had to be polished and perfect to exist in that space. I am certain that, had we written the record anywhere else, it just wouldn’t have sounded anything like it does.

M: You originally released music as Charlotte Jane before returning as CHARLS. You’ve described CHARLS as the most “you” you’ve felt in years. How has becoming CHARLS changed the way you write, perform or think about yourself as an artist?

C: It’s less so the name and more what this chapter of my career looks like behind the scenes. Choosing that name was reclaiming control, doing things my way and stripping back to the truest version of myself as an artist.

It also means keeping certain parts of myself and my life for me. Becoming CHARLS has been a huge part of finding where that line of separation is and it’s been very good for my mental health and my sense of self.

M: If “Heartbreak Looks Good On Me” is ultimately about finding yourself again, what part of yourself do you think you discovered through making the album that you didn’t have before?

C: That my gut feeling about things is not to be ignored. Ever.

M: When you listen to the album now, is there a particular song that makes you think, “I can’t believe I was that person when I wrote this”?

Honestly, the first two tracks. “Where Are You Now” and “Begging on My Birthday”. I feel so disconnected from the version of me that allowed herself to be walked all over and deceived the way that I was.

It’s a really beautiful thing to be able to listen through the songs and hear me find my backbone again.

M: One last thing. Are you a star or a freak? 

C: Freak. Proper weird like x

Photo credit: S-Projects