New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
From TikTok to Coachella
CT MUSICIAN CAROLINE POLACHEK TO OPEN FOR DUA LIPA AND PERFORM AT COACHELLA THIS YEAR
From being featured all over TikTok to earning a coveted Coachella appearance this year, Greenwich-raised musician Caroline Polachek is taking the music world by storm.
Her 2019 hit “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” is undergoing a commercial revival with the song amassing over 40 million streams on Spotify and over 33,500 videos on TikTok, as of Jan. 13.
Aside from her commercial success, Polachek is critical darling as well, having earned a plethora of praise for her work from publications like Pitchfork, NPR and NME. She was also nominated for a Grammy in 2014 for her production and writing work on Beyoncé’s eponymous album.
Outside of the studio, Polachek has become a touring powerhouse. She is an opener for Dua Lipa’s upcoming U.S. tour, which will make stops at Madison Square Garden in New York City and TD Garden in Boston. Polachek is also making a stop mid-tour to her old stomping grounds in order to play a one-off show at New Haven’s College Street Music Hall on Feb. 20.
Born in Manhattan, the 36-yearold singer moved around before she moved to Greenwich when she was seven, according to an interview with Into The Gloss, a beauty blog.
“I remember begging my way into choir in the 3rd grade, because you’re not supposed to get in until 4th grade. I’d sing everywhere,” Polachek told The Gloss about growing up in Greenwich. “I was into music from a very early age, and I was also—I don’t really talk about this that much—really into horses. I learned a lot about rhythm and about voice from that.”
After graduating from Greenwich High School in 2003, Polachek attended University of Colorado, where she would later start the synth-pop band Chairlift. The group broke through to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008 with their hit “Bruises” after the song was used for an Apple commericial. Chairlift climbed the indie ladder, even getting the chance to open up for artists like The Killers and fellow Connecticut-bred band MGMT.
According to an interview with the New Yorker, Polachek felt like her time with Chairlift was over after her breakup with band member Aaron Pfenning, and his eventual departure from the group. Adding to the tension was her frustration with bandmate Patrick Wimberly, who would produce the music she was writing.
“I think I started to resent the fact that I didn’t have my hands on the wheel, that I had to go through a boy,” Polachek said in the interview. “There was a side of me that didn’t really play into the idea of a band, that was more electronically-minded, and wanted to play more with the idea of theatre and costume than I felt able to do when surrounded by unshaved guys onstage.”
Chairlift announced their breakup in 2017.
Polachek focused on releasing her own solo material afterwards, which culminated in the release of her sophomore album, “Drawing the Target Around the Arrow,” one month after the breakup of Chairlift.
Following her breakthrough as a solo artist, Polachek began to get noticed by a number of indie pop musicians, such as Charli XCX, Christine and the Queens and Blood Orange, all of whom she collaborated with.
Her most recent album, 2019’s “Pang,” marked her first solo, charttopping album and was released to “universal acclaim,” according to metacritic.
Caroline Polachek will be performing at College Street Music Hall in New Haven on Sunday, Feb. 20 at 8:00 p.m.