Be Charlotte ready to shine again after lockdown darkness

Before lockdown, Dundee’s hottest new homegrown pop artist, Be Charlotte, seemed to be on a meteoric rise.

Her trademark high bun and huge bright specs were becoming familiar sights to music fans, and after some bigger gigs and trips across the pond, she was about to go on tour.

When Covid hit, the postponed gigs and cancelled sessions might have pulled the rug out from under her. But she didn’t stay down for long.

“Since I launched as Be Charlotte I’ve never really stopped,” Charlotte (Brimner) said. “It’s always just been going on to the next thing, whether that’s gigs, or songwriting, or working with different people. This last year has stopped all of that. And obviously there’s moments of that which are really difficult.”

Charlotte has been hard at work. She released her debut EP, Dreaming With The Lights Off, last June at the height of lockdown.

And she followed it up with singles, home-shot videos and a steady stream of online content to keep her growing fanbase sated.

Now, just this week, she’s dropped her third single of 2021 – You Stole The Summer.

Charlotte said: “I wrote the song a few years ago now, and at the time it was probably the most personal and honest song I’d ever written.

“Writing that song really started me on a different journey songwriting-wise, to really go for it.”

The track, “a direct letter to the people who have let me down or abandoned me in life”, is a stripped-back, emotional reimagining of her EP track Brighter Without You.

Piano-driven and plaintive, it proves Charlotte’s airy vocals and lyrics hold up without the cushion of pop production.

Charlotte said: “A lot of the EP content was quite sad and emotional, but the way it was presented was a bit more poppy and upbeat – which I love!

“But I love stripped-back, acoustic, proper emotional moments, so I wanted to capture that.”

Revisiting and reimagining songs has become something of a trend over the past year, with artists such as Maisie Peters and Dodie setting a precedent by releasing multiple versions of the “same” songs.

“I think a lot of times, in the music industry, people think that songs maybe don’t have a very long life,” Charlotte said. “But I think music is so powerful and it can stand the test of time.

“And it’s been really exciting to delve back into songs and find bits about them that I didn’t notice the first time.

“It’s good to just try different things and not feel like you’re boxed in.”

Indeed, a big part of Be(ing) Charlotte is eluding those boxes in favour of authenticity. Her idols include pop sensations Lizzo and Taylor Swift – “who I think just show that you can be who you want to be, and still be absolutely smashing it”.

And her music expertly straddles singer-songwriter and pop sounds, never committing fully to either.

“I’ve always loved both,” she said. “I started on acoustic guitar, being a singer-songwriter. And then when I realised ‘oh, I write pop music’, I started messing around more with the production side of things, building tracks myself.”

And it’s clear that even though she’s no expert producer (yet), Charlotte is the curator of her own sound, having taught herself the basics from Youtube tutorials.

“I love being able to get down an idea that I’ve got in my head and build the track a bit,” she said.

“But then it’s also really good to get somebody else involved who can get it to sound exactly how I want it to sound!”

Another distinctive feature of Charlotte’s sound is her voice. She’s Dundee born and bred, and unlike some Scottish singers who feel pressured to flatten their accent to a sort of La-london hodgepodge, Charlotte lets her native twang shine through on her vocals.

“I think when I first started, I did sound a bit more like my influences – a lot of English and American artists,” she said.

“And then when I was learning guitar, I listened to a lot of Paolo Nutini and I think that must have subliminally got into my head and been like – ” she waggles her fingers at her temples, little psychic waves, “it’s OK, you can sing in your own accent.

“I’d be cringing at myself if I ever tried to sing in any other way.”

Charlotte’s selfassuredness speaks of her 10 years banked in the music industry – but it’s

easy to forget that she’s still only 24, having begun her career at open-mic nights when she was just 14.

As we speak, the internet is in a frenzy over singer Billie Eilish’s new Vogue cover shoot, and the conversations online show that being a young woman in music is no easy task.

“It wasn’t something I noticed to begin with,” said Charlotte. “But there’s definitely been situations where I’ve been treated differently because I’m a woman, a younger girl.”

She said: “When I first started playing with a band, we had this digital set-up. And every time we’d turn up, the sound engineer would go to the guys in the band and say, ‘Oh how do we use this?’

“The guys would say, ‘That’s Charlotte’s thing, you have to go and talk to her’. But they would never

be willing to listen to me in that instance. That’s just a really small example of it, but it exists on a much bigger scale.”

Asked what she thinks could be done to make things better, she said: “One of the things we need to do is get young girls feeling empowered enough to pick up an instrument and write a song.

“Confidence is a big barrier in that. So that’s something I’ve been focused on the past few years, is to help some younger girls who want to make music.”

So what’s on the horizon for Be Charlotte?

“Hopefully, a few festivals this summer. And then I have a tour this November, in Scotland and England.”

Be Charlotte will play Church, Dundee, on November 17 (restrictions permitting).

I’d be cringing at myself if I ever tried to sing in any other way

ON SONG: Be Charlotte has released a new single, You Stole The Summer.