Sydney based pop musician Charley is set to release her debut album The Chronicles of a Serial Idealist this week. I sat down with her to discuss her journey to this point, what it means to be a ‘serial idealist’ and to take a closer look at the album and upcoming tour.
Charley has been making music for several years now and I was curious to know what her journey had been like leading up the release of her debut album.
“I grew up on the Gold Coast, and I always knew that I loved music, but I didn’t know if I could do it for a living until I met one of my ex-boyfriends from years back. And he started doing music for a living and one thing that relationship showed me [was] that I could do it for a living if I just did it.”
“Then I moved from the Gold Coast to Sydney, and then ever since I’ve just been doing it, and it’s the one thing that I lose track of time with. I think that’s one of the most important things that you should do for your career, something that you get so lost in that time goes by so quickly.”
She tries to piece together the timeline, settling on the fact it’s been roughly 5 years since her first single, then EP Timebombs came out three years ago and now finally an album. She’s been acutely aware since the release of Timebombs that she was ready to put out a longer project, and now the last two years of work have resulted in The Chronicles of a Serial Idealist.
I was interested in how it feels to be making pop music and trying to stand out in what is becoming an increasingly oversaturated market, and I loved that Charley’s answer was “change your hair colour”.
This is vastly oversimplifying her journey of course. There is also the constant hard work involved in song writing, working with producers halfway around the world, curating her upcoming tour, creating social media content etc., all alongside the mental gymnastics of trying to not be constantly comparing herself to others. Although I suspect this is something Charley plays down even in her own mind – a lasting remnant of the idealist in her perhaps?
“I do believe in the hair theory.” She continues. “I feel like there’s a lot of people that you kind of recognise them by their hair, and I think I always wanted to do that when I first dyed my hair pink – but now that I’m blue, it feels quite natural to me.” For anyone who doesn’t know, Charley’s hair is the most stunning midnight blue colour and it really does suit her perfectly, akin to the pop personas of Chappell Roan with her bright red curls, Charli XCX’s iconic brat green, and Zara Larsson’s dolphin branding. She makes a good point – it’s a very iconic way to build an identity a pop star.
Moving onto the album, The Chronicles of a Serial Idealist is a lusciously produced pop record bursting with beautiful storytelling exploring Charley’s life over the past few years. I asked Charley to share a little more about the album and what being a serial idealist means to her:
“So The Chronicles of a Serial Idealist is basically about seeing the best in every situation and it’s kind of like toxic positivity in everything you’re handed, because I feel like within the last three years of my life I was really trying to push for everything to be okay, and I would really try and just… I don’t know, just get through everything and not face reality.”
“I would just keep getting dealt these like bad situations and it wasn’t healthy. So this whole album is about the cycle of realising the reality and learning to come to terms with the fact that you can’t put up with bad things that happen to you. Like if someone’s being bad to you you cannot idealise that. You cannot. And then you have to get over it, because life is just too short to give a fuck.”
“So that is why the start of it is like dream blend, and then you kind of have this realisation by the end of it. The End of Everything is about, we’re all gonna die, so that person or that thing that happened to you just cannot matter.”
The album is obviously a highly personal one to Charley. She uses both the words ‘scary’ and ‘embarrassing’ when talking about putting the album out into the world:
“[it’s] kind of embarrassing, ’cause you’re kind of having to just relive something where you were just being dramatic.”
One example she shares to illustrate what she means is like when she writes about something that happened in a two week situationship. However, there’s also depth in there too as the album explores her experiences as a queer woman. She reflects that parts of the album are about her family’s acceptance of her sexuality, and it’s clear that it’s impossible to untangle this part of her identity from the stories in The Chronicles of A Serial Idealist.
We took a dive into some of the tracks on the record and spend quite a bit of time discussing Boys Scare Me. As a queer woman, it was a song that resonated deeply with me on a personal level too and Charley shared a little more about the story behind it:
“Basically, that song came about because I thought I was gay for, like, a whole two years, and then a man asked me out on a date, and I was, like… Why am I kind of interested? And then, this whole spiral happened, ’cause I… don’t really like men. Like, sexually. They also really scare me. And then, it also just goes so much deeper than that because of everything that’s happening in the world, and, like, why do I feel scared going on a date with a man, and it’s so much about safety, and even, like, Donald Trump.“
“It just dives deeper, and it’s more than just, like, being scared to go on a date with a man, really.”
And it is. It’s summed up everything I feel about men at one point or another as a queer woman, from the personal considerations for my safety and how beginning a relationship with a man feels so very different to with a woman, to the big picture of where we are in the right now and the role of patriarchy. This is something she does so beautifully across the whole album, building these songs with such deep feelings and clear stories.
The other two tracks we discuss in detail are Little Rockstar, one of my favourites on the album, and one of Charley’s favourites: Other Side of the Room.
I love Little Rockstar as I think it’s a very candid take from someone in the industry. Charley opens up about the track, sharing that she loves writing about limerence and this song was written from the perspective of always wanting to date a musician, yet then being unsure if she actually did want to date them or if she just wanted to be them – in the sense of seeing someone being so successful, and doing all of the things you want to do. I like that it took something that’s a dream of so many people and added a layer of reality to it.
Other Side of the Room is one of the sadder songs on the album, Charley shares:
“That’s a very real song, and I was going through a situation where my ex was literally everywhere I went. One thing that I really do believe in is invisible strings, and how, no matter where you go it’s like maybe: Maybe they’re real, maybe they’re not. But at that point, I feel like when you go through a breakup you really believe that invisible strings are real, because no matter what you think, no matter what you do, you think of them, or you see them, or you see their family. Literally, at one point, I was driving on the highway, and they were next to me, in the car, and I was like, I cannot escape you. I need you to get out of my head. So this song was born of frustration.” She clarifies it’s not a recent situation, but I think that distance from the experience has allowed her to recognise and articulate the strength of those feelings of that time.
She adds:
“I’m really happy with how it’s turned out, and I kind of wrote that song from a perspective for how I wanted to perform it live as well [and to] have audience interaction, which I think is a really important part of music.”
On the notion of live music her upcoming tour is something that comes up regularly throughout our conversation. Charley is keen to keep a lot of the details of the show close to her chest, though she did reveal:
“I’m trying to really hone down on the title of the album and try and make that as much of a dramatic experience for everyone as I can.”
I’m intrigued to know more now and can’t wait for the live dates to come around. She chats excitedly about reconfiguring the arrangements so they suit a live version of each track. She’s also keen to hear people singing along to her tracks and is looking forward doing her first VIP meet and greets before each show!