'I Wanted My Album To Feel Bigger Than Just Music': Charley On 'The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist'

Sarah Duggan

On the cusp of releasing her debut album, 'The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist,' Charley is having a full-circle moment.

Charley(Credit: Britt Lucas)

On the cusp of releasing her debut album, Charley is having a real full-circle moment. She first stepped onto the stage of The Voice Australia as Claire Howell, a young artist with a huge voice and even bigger potential. After years of writing and releasing music, she’s now an ARIA-nominated artist about to drop her best collection of music yet, The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist.

Charley turned heads with 2023’s Timebombs, a punchy, 6-track EP that captured a specific moment in her life. It was definitely a breakthrough, but The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist feels more like a bold statement by comparison.

At its core, it's a catchy pop record with big, fun tracks and surprisingly intricate instrumentation. The longer you sit with it, though, you’ll notice that there’s a depth to it that slowly reveals itself and lets you in piece by piece.

Originally, the album was going to be called Tunnel Vision, but thanks to a growing sense of self-awareness and one too many fantasy novels, Charley landed on something that felt far more fitting. “I wanted my album to feel bigger than just music,” she tells The Music. “It’s felt like a whole chunk of my life that’s been separated into chapters.”

“I use writing music as a form of therapy”, she opens up, adding, “A lot of my music is writing about the heartbreak but having some sort of hope.” This is a balance that Charley achieves so well, not just in her lyrics but also in how she openly talks about her life and her art.

“I was just going through so many different titles, and the one thing that really stuck with me was being an idealist. And then I wanted it to sound a little bit crazy, so serial idealist came to me.”

Across the twelve tracks, Charley embraces the contradictions of someone who feels deeply and holds onto hope, even when past experience suggests you probably shouldn’t. This push and pull extends beyond the lyrics and is built into the overall sound, too. Upbeat, euphoric choruses sit alongside more restrained, reflective verses, creating a constant sense of movement from the highs to the lows.

Most importantly, though, this is a full-length album experience. After the six-track Timebombs, Charley knew for certain that she wanted to go bigger this time, both in length and scope.

“I really just wanted to have a whole experience that was 12 songs that you could really get immersed in,” she says. “Six songs were the hardest thing for me to do back then. It was just the natural next step, to make an album, and I loved it.”

While it might have been the obvious next step in Charley’s journey, this doesn’t mean that it came about easily. As well as being a serial idealist, Charley is a self-proclaimed perfectionist and wasn’t going to settle for anything less.

Part of the reason this album feels so deeply personal is the years of blood, sweat and tears that were poured into it, making it a hard-earned labour of love. The other part is that this is an intentionally immersive record, structured to capture the journey of idealism- there’s a hopeful beginning, confusion, the inevitable dip and, eventually, acceptance.

“At the end of it, there’s a song that’s called The End Of Everything,” Charley explains. “I tried to write that song so many times, because I really wanted to get the sentiment of ‘We’re all gonna fucking die so why do we actually care?’… I think that’s how I get through things when I get really down or sad.”

It’s a heavy sentiment, but it’s one she delivers in an oddly comforting way, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

And while some tracks have obvious meanings, others can be quite ambiguous, like Boys Scare Me, which took on a new meaning over time. Charley shares, “At the beginning, that song was only about when I thought I was gay for two years, then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m bi and boys really scare me,’ but now when I look at that song, it’s coming into this day and age about how men are just really scary—I mean, just look at everything that’s going on in America… I don’t know, I just hope that these songs reach people in what they’re really needing to hear."

This personal and creative evolution is at the heart of the record. Timebombs came at a time when Charley was still figuring things out, but The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist arrives as she has a firmer grasp on her identity, the perfect time to release a debut record. There’s also a noticeable difference in how she speaks about herself now- less questioning and more clarity.

“I had a lot of experiences with Timebombs where I was figuring out who I am, because that was a very queer EP”, Charley reflects, revealing, “I had only just really been with a girl just before all other songs came out… Writing this one, I was a lot more aware of who I was, even though I still don’t know who I am—we all don’t know who we are; we’re always growing.

“I think my certainty of queerness and how I see myself, and the impact of coming out to my family, it was what I wanted to write about and what I wanted my listeners and people who love my music to know.”

While she’s confident in her identity now, that openness came with a bit of hesitation and, understandably, uncertainty about how it would land with her audience. There’s always a risk in being so direct, especially when it comes to pop music, where relatability can sometimes be prioritised over specificity. But for Charley, these are not mutually exclusive.

She found freedom in honesty, and, in doing so, a deeper connection with listeners. On her hopes for the record, Charley shares, “I really wanted to make sure that this album was preaching a lot more positivity so that I wasn’t manifesting bad shit while singing it, and it’s been so nice seeing people be happy while listening to it."

Because of this, there’s a noticeable shift in tone. Even as the songs drift into a more emotionally heavy territory, there’s a sense of lightness that comes with the fun pop melodies. It doesn’t feel weighed down by emotion, but instead feels like the perfect balance achieved by sitting with difficult emotions without letting them take over. This is a perspective that’s been hard-earned through lived experience.

Since her time on The Voice and even in the years before that, Charley has been building towards this moment: writing and releasing music consistently while navigating an ever-changing industry. While Australian pop feels like it’s in a strong place right now, it hasn’t been an easy space to break into.

“I think, for one, all the pop in Australia is amazing,” Charley says confidently. “Blusher is one of my favourite bands to listen to right now. All the girls are just fucking doing it, which is really, really cool to see.”

And while they’re making it look easy, Charley agrees it’s anything but. The current landscape of the Australian pop scene demands more than strong vocals and songwriting abilities- it also requires them to be full-time content creators.

“TikTok is the biggest thing right now, and you really just have to put your entire self on TikTok,” she explains. “Probably the biggest hurdle for people is not just doing music, you have to be good at social media as well, which has been a growing experience for me. You just never know when a video is gonna go, but it’s really fun when it does.”

It’s a reality most emerging artists can heavily relate to at the moment, a constant balancing act between creativity and visibility.

For Charley, it’s all part of building a world around her music and inviting people in, which is ultimately her goal with this record. The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist is not just made to be heard, but to be felt. On the surface, she wants listeners to have fun with it and enjoy it for being packed full of pop-bangers. But underneath that, there’s a deeper intention to connect with her listeners and have people see themselves in these songs.

The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist really does have it all: the opening track, Muscle Memory, will hook you in, Limerence will have you dancing and tracks like Man On The Moon, and The End Of Everything will make you feel like you’ve just walked out of a therapy session.

This is by far Charley’s best work, and from chatting with her about it, it’s plain to see why. Shaped by her lived experiences, she’s an artist who is confident in her identity and self-aware enough to have fun with it.

Charley’s The Chronicles Of A Serial Idealist will be released on Friday, 17 April, via EMI Music Australia. She tours Australia this May - tickets are available here.