Los Angeles by way of Nashville singer/songwriter Charlee Remitz has just released her album, ‘Sad Girl Music’. It’s full of 80’s inspired synths and breakaway vocals that tell a story of the first flashes of love.
Charlee has put together a playlist together for Indietronica. Check it out below!
Troye Sivan – SUBURBIA
I’ve always admired Troye Sivan’s work in its entirety. His songs are beautifully structured–the melodies, the lyrics, the swelling synths and sparkling production beneath. I tend to stray from most modern pop. It’s become predictable. There are no dramatic or epic imperfections, which is something I think is so important in music. That subtle messy quality, which reminds you this person is human. This side effect of life is relatable. Love is found and lost. Troye Sivan transmogrifies the mundane–that’s what I most admire about this song. It is, in essence, a love letter to suburbia–the most mundane and simple part of our world. Where things look neat and perfect, but wars and exhausted battles are being fought within. Where transformation is often a thing of myth.
Lorde – Homemade Dynamite
Lorde is an elegant songstress. She draws a parallel between princesses and youth, kings and jesters. She has this incredible ability to string all these different parts of life into one teeming soup of tragic, melancholic celebration. There’s an insane relatability there, but also a disconnect, in that you can never imagine rising to such a prodigious understanding of life and its weary inhabitants. I’ve always imagined her heart is a different color than mine. A different shape even. It seems far more resilient and impervious to societal blue. I love how it observes our changing landscape, how it translates it into written word.
Hayley Kiyoko – Sleepover
This song is a wild clump of Forget-Me-Not. That sudden and intense remembrance of everything you had with a lover in your bed, especially knowing you may not ever have it again, as that love is swept away, downstream. But it isn’t nefarious, it’s sweet, it’s a lullaby. There’s no vengeance. I wanted to touch on that same elegance when I wrote about the end of my relationship.
Ariana Grande – Thinking Bout You
I’m not actually a massive Ariana Grande fan. But she does have BIG moments. Big, random, wonderful, spontaneous songs that pop up on each album. “Why Try,” “Thank U, Next,” and this track are all immediate, flawless favorites of mine. A branch of polished pop I can get behind. They all carry like a movie epic. The way they rise and fall, the way she tells a story, it’s like her vocals are afloat.
Aly and AJ – Take Me
This track is a dream. An ode to the 80s. I’ve largely called upon the 80s for inspiration with this album, right down to the fonts used. The 80s have this disconnected sparkle. Everything seems vivid and colorful and the stories are epic, teenagers riding in their classic cars, falling in love on spindle-wired phones. Unrequited love is in drastic overuse, but this story seems brand new. A blue heart turning remarkably pink by the song’s grand finale.
FLETCHER – You Should Talk
I didn’t fully understand this song until I went through a similar situation. Now, it’s the most relatable song to me in the world. There truly is no terror beyond the person you love finding love, comfort, sharing their self and body with someone new. Lately, I’ve been struggling most with the lack of empathy and warmth. The boy I loved, and will probably love forever, has no warmth left. No compassion. When he addresses me, it’s ice cold, and I’m left in his wake, shivering. I’m tired of the misunderstanding. The desire to find a closure that could exist if only he would open up just a bit and tell me his misses me too. It doesn’t need to be our revival, it just needs to be a final, “It was real, but now we let go.”
Katelyn Tarver – You Don’t Know
Simply put, this is the song I cried to, for so long. It’s being misunderstood. It’s wanting to be blue. It’s wishing people would stop poking at you. It’s being sad and not forcing yourself to wipe your tears. It’s ugly. It’s beautiful. It’s just letting it consume you for one moment because you’re sick of being strong. But there’s a triumph in that. Even if it feels like giving up. You’re not. You’re giving in so you can find the strength in unraveling.
John Mayer – In Your Atmosphere
The truest love of mine: John Mayer. Picking just one song was quite the struggle. I landed here because it falls–somewhat–in line with the rest of these. It has that cosmic feel the others do. Some carry it in their production, some in the story, some in the melodic structure. John Mayer is a wordsmith and “In Your Atmosphere” is the perfect break up song for someone like me–who loves being connected to another heart in the world when I’m traveling, who loves coming home to someone. Who loves that drum in my chest, the butterflies in my belly, the buzzing beneath my skin. That anticipation is a miracle. I’ve lost it. I feel terrified I took it for granted and won’t have it again.
Taylor Swift – Call it What You Want
A delicate love story. I remember listening through Reputation for the first time, and winding up in tears after its redemptive finale, with “Call it What You Want” and “New Year’s Day.” I’m not a crier without reason. How she found such a sweet and sound ending to an album that was otherwise filled with revenge, is beyond me, but she did. I wanted to end Sad Girl Music in a similar manner. I wanted it to come full circle. To feel like a journey. To drive, and then, to drift.
Lord Huron – Lost in Time and Space
I was very inclined to select his other, more popular 13 Reasons Why smash success, “The Night We Met,” but felt this track was one I more often heard in my head when I was in a rare moment of silence. Lost in time and space. Isn’t that what we all are? “Drowning in the seas of stars, lost in a galaxy of cocktail bars.” It’s miserable and uplifting. It’s sadness, it’s the distraction you search for, it’s the acceptance: all you have is you. You have you and the stars, and what else–really–do you need? Getting to that place. That final turning moment where you realize, love, as special and beautiful it is with another, love is best enjoyed when it’s found with yourself. When you become resolute–lost in time and space.
Sounds like: Dominique, CAPPA
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