After the release of her 2019 debut album Immunity, Claire Cottrill could have capitalized on her music’s virality with another slew of made-for-TikTok bedroom-pop hits in the vein of the LP’s breakout songs, “Bags” and “Sofia.” But on her Laurel Canyon-esque 2021 follow-up Sling, the singer-songwriter opted for a far less commercial route. Amid the pandemic, she retreated to her family’s home in Atlanta where she traded her earlier musings about crushes and awkward growing pains for tales of domesticity and a newfound sense of confidence toward romance. The softer, spacious album, co-produced by Jack Antonoff with backing vocals from Lorde, toyed with psychedelia and retro folk-pop channeling the warmth of songwriters like Joan Baez and Carole King. But those who thought Sling might be a pit-stop or a one-off departure for Cottrill were wrong.
On her third album Charm, Clairo elevates the aesthetic she introduced on Sling and forges deeper into a lush palette of Seventies melodies. Now 25, she is playfully blurring the lines of pop, R&B, soul and folk with the sounds of the Wurlitzer, mellotron, organ and piano swirling around her. This palpable shift of self-assuredness is due in part to her own coming of age, but also a consequence of her tapping soul and funk savant Leon Michels (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band) as co-producer.
While her hushed vocals have always established a sense of closeness within her work, the Clairo of Charm exists as a much more intimate foray. “Second Nature” is a steamy, ever-evolving earworm that oscillates from horn-flanked adult contemporary to anxious keys. “It’s when you’re close enough to touch/I’ve forgotten the point/My train of thought destroyed,” she croons with a dreamy lilt. Teeming with yearning and desire, the flute-flanked “Sexy to Someone” is the epitome of a horny indie-folk anthem. The warm R&B groove of “Juna” allows Clairo to let go of her inhibitions amid a blossoming romance: “You make me wanna/Go buy a new dress/You make me wanna/Slip off a new dress.” Flanked by twinkling piano, her airy vocals float on “Slow Dance” as she navigates the nuances of a situationship. “What is it? That’s keeping one foot out/And the other crawling in bed,” she wonders.
There are also undeniable moments where Clairo builds on the pastoral nature of Sling. There’s the crystalline “Glory of the Snow,” the album’s opener “Nomad,” where her velvety vocals float over a wistful steel pedal and the crushing cymbals of the spacey psych-folk “Echo,” which evokes The Doors. But it’s Charm’s delicate closer, “Pier 4,” that serves as the record’s gut-punch, wrapping up the 11-track album like a cozy knit sweater. The hymn-like number sees Clairo grappling with her public-facing persona and the comfort of an introverted life. “What’s the cost of being loved?/When close is not close enough?” she ponders over a swelling vibraphone.
While listeners won’t find Brat summer-esque anthems on Charm, the album is a soothing balm, providing an understated rush that’s ultimately just as impactful. What Clairo proves is that craft is paramount and she’s primed to become one of the most revered songwriters of her generation.
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Jack White Responds After Uproar Over Taylor Swift Songwriting Comment
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Jack White posted a statement on Instagram Monday evening after numerous publications took his comments in an interview with The Guardian out of context. When discussing poetry and songwriting, White mentioned fellow musician Taylor Swift‘s style of songwriting, and explored his own approach to storytelling when creating music. Unfortunately, online outlets framed his words as a critique of the Tortured Poets star, especially when it came to headlines that quickly circulated on the internet.
“Putting this up for a day and then taking down to just put this to bed,” wrote White in the since-deleted post. “I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together. What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing, was that I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and It could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.”
White went on to acknowledge the “tremendous success” of Swift and other songwriters who have their own process, while stating that just “because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way.” He added, “They should do what works for them, And they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that.”
When asked by The Guardian in the article published Sunday, if any of any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White replied, “Not too much. Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
White further explained, “Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song. If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
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In his Monday statement, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that at times he has been “made less and less interested in doing interviews” amid the “age of this massive demand for click bait and content.” Any “scrape of anything interesting” can be used as drama and “spit out as bait,” he continued, leading White to “not want to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I’m too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this from so called ‘journalists’ and ‘editors.'”
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He ended his response to the wave of backlash following his interview by saying, “This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”
ADVERTISEMENTWhite recently released Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, a collection of lyrics from the artist’s solo recordings including No Name, The Raconteurs, and more, plus selected poems and writings by White, and essays by poet Adrian Matejka.