INTERVIEW: Charlie Collins returns with new album 'Undone': “There are songs on there I never thought would see the light of day because they are so personal."
Australia’s Charlie Collins today releases her second album Undone, a stunning collection of music that details the breakdown of her marriage and the subsequent journey of working through her pain and coming out the other end a better, stronger person.
The follow-up to her 2019, ARIA-nominated debut solo album Snowpine, Undone sees Collins work with a number of top tier producers including Xavier Dunn (Graace, Jack River), Gab Strum (Japanese Wallpaper), Robby De Sá (The Veronicas, MAY-A, Dami Im) as well as producing a number of tracks herself. Collins has embraced a wider soundscape on Undone compared to her previous work, including spirited electro-pop track with dashes of Britpop on ‘Just My Luck’; the dreamy jazz-soul that trips lightly into atmospheric pop of ‘Skyline’; and ‘No More to Lose’ is liberally infused with country.
Through it all runs the pain of her marriage collapse and Collins has never been as honest, vulnerable and raw as she is on Undone. She is brutally direct and is not afraid of exposing her own flaws in the process. Album stand out and first single ‘Fuck It’, an addictive pop-punk-rock number sees her take the blame for the marriage falling apart in an unusual twist on the “star-crossed lovers” or “you broke my heart” theme most break-up pop songs have. “I’ll take all the blame and wear it on my back / And walk with the shame and you can watch me crack / Fuck it, it’s my fault / … You didn’t deserve that pain / … And I don’t deserve your last name,” she sings. There is a resignation and a sorrow in Collins’ vocal delivery that make the song far more heartbreaking than a standard break-up lament.
‘November’, which was written and produced solely by Collins, is a stunning, stripped-back piano ballad which also sees Collins taking ownership of her faults and mixes in her heartache. “I was feeling so lost, didn’t know what it would cost / … Tell me that you’re doing better now I’m not around / Are you happy now? / ’Cos all I ever did was bring you down,” she sings.
With Collins exploring her trauma and angst, you may think the album is a depressing listen; in fact, it is the reverse - it’s something you want to return to over and over again for its expertly created music. Plus, throughout the album the overriding message is one of hope and rebirth, that we can overcome anything life throws at us. “You’re always going to slip and fall along the way. Whatever breaks you builds you up even stronger,” she says.
With Undone, Collins is proving she really is one of the most talented artists in Australia right now. Undone is such a magical, immersive, emotive listen it is bound to end up on your best albums of the year list. We recently caught up with Charlie to find out more about the creation of this gem.
Charlie, hello and thank you so much for your time today, Let's talk a little bit about Undone - what a beast. Talk me through what this album means to you and how you went about it?
I know every artist says it a lot, but it really is my most vulnerable record, to the point there are like songs on there that I never thought would actually see the light of day because they are so fucking personal. It kind of came about in bits, there's one song that I wrote a while ago that I really loved, ‘November’, but I just never thought it would see the light of day. I got in a studio and recorded half the record and there are songs that I pulled out and I was like ‘I don't know, maybe it's too much' [but] they ended up coming to life with a band, and now they're on the record for the world to hear.
With your scepticism about not seeing ‘November’ on the album was possibly because of the subject matter in the song itself? You're like, 'Oh, no one wants to hear that'.
Yeah, it's about my ex and our breakup and there's a line that I say, 'do you still call me your wife or the girl who fucked your life?' It's just very brutally honest. It was a song I sat down at the piano and just cried and wrote. It was our first anniversary not together, which was in November, and it was a song that I wrote for myself just to really get out everything that I felt. I'm like, ‘I fucking hate November’ and I just wrote this song and cried and and now it's on the album.
This is such a great album for everyone, but you may just lock it away in a room be like, ‘Yeah, we're gonna deal with that when we deal with that’.
It's true! I'm incredibly proud of it, I worked really hard. I finished the record a while ago, and I got to a point, the more I sat with it, I was just like, ‘I feel like I can do better.’ There's so much more I needed to say that I hadn’t said yet, and I hadn’t pulled out the really, inner gut wrenching things that is still kind of there. For me, music is my therapy and I still didn't feel like I had a full release. That was scary going to my whole team 'um I want to change record, like half of it'. I am lucky that I have such an incredible supportive team that trust me, musically and they had my back completely. They were like, ‘if you believe that you can do better than we can't stop you, so go for it’. That was really nice to have that belief and support for a scary decision wanting to change something and not knowing if I could write better or more gut wrenching [songs].
Your debut album in 2019 Snowpine was a massive, award nominated hit. Going into Undone how have you managed to balance that creative freedom and experimentation with what I imagined to be a bit of pressure to continue that success that Snowpine was?
I get what you're saying, I never put pressure on myself when it does come to music. I never even had that thought of ‘shit, it needs to be better than that.’ It's never about 'need to do better, need to do better', I'm more about 'I need to write how I feel, I need to verbal vomit through all that stuff’. Snowpine is such a dear album to me because it was my first and it was the first time I ever started writing on a guitar. I didn't even know I was gonna make an album. I had all the songs I’d written and just went and recorded it, and it happened to be an album. And I was like, ‘Oh, shit, I've got an album!’
You are Tamworth born and raised, which is Australia's answer to just being plopped in the middle of Nashville with regards to country music. Can you talk to me a little bit about your musical journey?
I was raised on a lot of country music when I was a little kid, my dad used to listen to a lot of country records so I lived and breathed it from such a young age. I was going to gigs when I was like seven years old. My first show that I saw was LeAnn Rimes, she was maybe 13 at the time, and I was like ‘how does someone so young do that?’ And then I wanted to be a singer after seeing her. Ever since then, I went in talent quests and I started gigging at pubs when I was 10, and I’ve never really stopped My nights from then on were singing in pubs and bars, and, going to schools with my hair smelling like cigarettes, because back then you could smoke everywhere!
You've been performing from a very young age, and you were in multiple bands for a very long time. Not to do a disservice to anyone that you've performed with but listening to your work and your lyrics your solo stuff goes deep and you put everything into a song. Do you think that's where your confidence to go to your record label, your management 'Hey, guys, just bear with me. I'm not yet done' comes from because you have worked in such collaborative spaces before and possibly felt a little bit suffocated in them?
Yeah, completely. In the bands that I was in, I never felt like I had complete musical freedom and even the songs that I was writing, they weren't me. I was just kind of writing pop songs that didn't really emotionally connect with me, even though I was writing them. Now I do always trust myself as opposed to anyone else when it comes to the writing and the music because no one else knows how you feel, you’re own boss in that sense. I definitely have more of an understanding and also more of a backbone to stand up for myself when it comes to the creative side.
Undone is out now via Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Charlie Collins you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
