Early on within the pandemic, Charlotte Lawrence was sitting in her Los Angeles dwelling, listening to music, when she had a revelation. As an alternative of continuous to make the type of radio-friendly, pop-centric songs she’d earned a repute for over the previous couple of years, her subsequent tracks could be totally different. Deeper. Extra her.
“I used to be like, ‘That is the music I like, so why do I not use these influences and write songs that i might need to take heed to by myself?’’” Lawrence says recollects on a current Zoom name from that LA dwelling. While you’re younger and new to the business, she continues, “it’s simple to get right into a entice of, ‘What would different individuals like, what would my label like, what would my followers like, what would get me probably the most success immediately?’”
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However after that day in quarantine, she says, “I began actually solely making the music that I needed to make, and I finished fascinated with pleasing the plenty or doing something for anybody else. I took my fucking time, wrote a bajillion songs and actually discovered my sound.”
That new sound could be heard in “Morning,” the primary single from Lawrence’s upcoming debut album. A haunting, melancholic monitor about dealing with infidelity, the track and its accompanying music video dropped Sept. 23 and marked the musician’s first new track in a year-and-a-half. Releasing “Morning” after such an extended break, Lawrence says, was “nerve-wracking,” particularly contemplating how totally different the tune is from earlier pop-rock-driven singles like “Discuss You Down” or the Birds of Prey soundtrack minimize “Joke’s on You.” However the fear that her followers wouldn’t take to the brand new course was overshadowed by her reduction of getting such a “actual and uncooked” track off her chest and into the world.
“An enormous curse in my private life, which is a big blessing in my songwriting and my music life, is that I’m not nice at going through my feelings head-on,” Lawrence explains. “With ‘Morning,’ it was a scenario the place I felt the large betrayal and the deep disappointment and as a substitute of placing within the work to cope with it, I form of pushed it down and saved it for the studio.” The track in the end helped her work by way of these feelings and discover therapeutic.
“Morning” was produced and co-written with Andy Park and Ben Gibbard —each of whom additionally labored with the musician on the remainder of the album — is more likely to be launched in early 2023. A lifelong fan of Dying Cab For Cutie and the Postal Service, Lawrence was thrilled by the prospect to collaborate with Gibbard, calling him “one of the unimaginable lyricists I’ve ever seen work in motion.”
“He was my hero, and now he’s producing me? That’s fucking loopy,” she laughs. “It feels greater than pure, like the best factor on this planet, to write down a bunch of songs with Ben.”
These as-yet-unreleased songs (together with a forthcoming single referred to as “Physique Bag”), Lawrence says, vary from ballads to mid-tempo tracks to various and rock bangers. “It doesn’t really feel like I can label a style on it or put it in a template,” she says. The one commonality, she provides, is a penchant for “very private lyrics and somewhat sad-girl vibe.”
Having grown up on artists like Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell, Lawrence values authenticity in music over all else, she says, and loves nothing greater than the thought of listeners connecting to her fact with their very own. Already, with “Morning,” she’s “gotten so many wonderful messages about how individuals relate to it with their very own tales and experiences, and the way it’s helped them.”As a lot as she loves songwriting, although, Lawrence has lately opted to department out into one other artwork type, taking up a recurring function within the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Unhealthy Monkey. Created by her father, the producer and director Invoice Lawrence (Scrubs, Ted Lasso), the present will mark Lawrence’s first foray into appearing. To earn the function, Lawrence labored intently with an appearing coach and “studied the script forwards and backwards” earlier than submitting her auditions, purposely leaving her title off the tapes so the casting director wouldn’t notice she was the showrunner’s daughter. She landed within the high 5, stunning her dad, who had no concept she’d even auditioned. Impressed by her efficiency, although, he forged her as Caitlin, a mannequin and recovering addict.
Nonetheless, Lawrence is totally conscious of her privilege in gaining the function. “If my dad wasn’t my dad, there may be the very best likelihood on this planet that I’d’ve by no means gotten this job, and I do know that,” she says. “However due to that, it made me need to work even tougher and show to myself that I might do that and deserve to do that although I’ve a really huge benefit.”
After filming the primary season, Lawrence says she’s intent on pursuing extra appearing jobs—with or with out her household’s assist. “I didn’t know the way a lot I’d’ve liked appearing, however I liked it,” she says.
Her primary precedence proper now, although, is seeing her album to the end line. Taking such an extended hiatus from music was wanted, she says, to “discover my sound and discover my stride,” however now that she’s assured in her new course, she’s intent on choosing up the tempo. “I need to preserve releasing music, to by no means cease, to not ever have a break like that once more,” she notes.
Hopefully listeners take pleasure in the brand new songs, however even when they don’t, that received’t cease Lawrence from shifting ahead. “You by no means know if a track will take off or if it will likely be a fart within the wind,” she says, laughing. “The one factor that basically issues, I imagine, is loving the track your self and being happy with it and pleased with it.”
“No matter occurs,” she provides, “I’m simply gonna preserve placing myself on the market and preserve releasing music and preserve going for it.” It doesn’t matter what any fan or label has to say.
