A Quick Chat with Charlotte Meade

Interview by Aysha Swanson

Your new song is centred around friendship changing and losing that closeness with someone. What does the song mean to you, and where did that idea come from?

I think this song kind of encapsulates that journey of going into your early 20s and losing connection with people, whether it’s situational or you realise there’s different people. I feel like there’s this push and pull of trying to have a conversation with the other person, but also kind of knowing that it was a little bit my fault, but then also it’s no one’s fault. It’s kind of a weird feeling.

I feel like it’s mainly about female-female friendship and also how important it is. I feel like the song is quite sad. It is sad, but it’s bittersweet.

You recorded the song with Ali at Swanpond Studios. Can you talk a little bit about what the recording process was like and how the track came together in the studio?

We just recorded it over a weekend. I played it live with Alex on drums and Lili on bass, and I played guitar, so we kind of put those beds down and then everything else was laid afterwards.

I feel like the song really evolved during the recording process as well. More so than Still Life and Tend the Gardener, I feel like it was a lot more on-the-spot production and creating the song on that weekend when we recorded it.

I also sent it to Snowy and he mixed it. It was my first time mixing with Snowy. He’s great. He’s super on it and really keen to hear my thoughts. I feel like he really embellished it in a really cool way.

There’s also a music video coming alongside the song. What does that visual side of the release symbolise for you?

I feel like the music video is like an accessory of the meaning of the song about a friendship changing and kind of coming to terms with the fact that things may never be the same. I feel like that is also a lot of the meaning in this song.

Just coming to terms with that fact. As hard as sometimes you try to make something be the same as it used to, it’s kind of impossible.

There’s an egg motif, which my friend Bailey made the costume for. It’s kind of like the Humpty Dumpty theme of trying to put something back together again, but I’m a fractured egg. I’m an egg split open, the egg yolk, sunny-side up on the beach. It’s never going back in the shell. It’s never going back.

I feel like there’s so much to dissect about the song, but ultimately it’s just about friendship and being stuck in the knowledge that things may never be the same.

Sonically, how do you think this song compares to your first two releases?

I think it’s a little bit more poppy, maybe. A bit more like... I guess it wasn’t recorded live with everyone in the room, which was the way that Still Life and Tend The Gardener were recorded.

So it definitely allowed for more layers to be added. There’s a synth playing throughout, like a drone throughout the whole track, and I really liked that use of drone to kind of fill space.

I feel like it is moving forward from the live sound a bit more. I don’t know, I feel like it’s just different.

There are still elements of it because it is still me and it was recorded at the same place and stuff, but it definitely sounds like a progression.

You’ve said that you’ve been thinking about the grief of friendships for quite a while. What space were you in when you wrote this song?

I feel like I’ve been feeling grief of friendships for a couple of years, and even from years and years ago, from my hometown and stuff. I’ve just been wanting to kind of understand why friendships end and change, because you don’t really see it coming and it’s just such a weird feeling.

I feel like I’ve been stuck in that feeling and I’m still stuck in it. So it was just something I wanted to write about for ages.

I wrote it like I have with every song that I’ve written so far. I wrote it on my nylon-string guitar and just laid it down when I was house-sitting at someone’s place. Then I brought it to the band and they added all their parts.

The song is called “Isabelle”. Is there a particular person or story behind that name?

Isabelle is actually the name of one of my closest friends from Townsville, who was one of the first to believe in me about music. But the song isn’t really about anyone in particular, to be honest.

It’s about the feeling of friendships changing, because I feel like it’s happened like five times in my life.