You may think you know Charlotte MacInnes. Maybe you saw her in the musical Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch, or the TV show North Shore, or glanced at her name online and seen various stories. So, maybe you have heard of the young Australian singer/songwriter. But I promise you, you don’t know Charlotte MacInnes yet.
For starters, MacInnes will be the first to tell you until you have heard her original music, you can’t really know her. “I do feel a very emotional kind of freedom because when you sing other people’s songs and read other people’s words it can be very empowering. But there is nothing more empowering than being able to say your own words and sing your own words,” she says to kick off our utterly enthralling hour-long chat. “It gives a whole new feeling to something I’ve been doing my whole life. I’ve been writing songs for a long time but then lots of people being able to hear them is a very different experience so I’m beyond thrilled.”
Sure, the absolutely charming and delightful MacInnes, who smiles and laughs often in our conversation, spent an extended period on stage every night singing the songs of Welch to audiences. But she purposely lists herself as a singer first in her Instagram bio and that side of herself hasn’t been shared with the world, at least outside of her hometown.
“I perform my own songs live exclusively at a little bar in the tiny town that I’m from. I probably knew everyone at that pub, and I don’t think they even really knew. I wasn’t announcing. ‘I’m going to sing some originals.’ I was like, ‘Let’s just chuck them in the set and see what happens,’” she says.
As someone who says, “I had really big feelings when I was a teenager,” and managed to turn a barroom cover of KISS’ “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” into an emotional plea, MacInnes proudly wears her heart on her sleeves in both life and music.
“I think vulnerability is the ultimate strength. I really believe that. I think hardening your heart after heartbreak, and I don’t mean heartbreak romantically, I mean it in all forms. Things break your heart all the time. It’s part of life. But that kind of feeling is integral to the human experience. And if you can capture that emotion and put it to song then you’ve got [Joni Mitchell’s] ‘I could drink a case of you and I’d still be on my feet.’ How can you speak to the bittersweetness of life and love without being vulnerable? I don’t think you can,” she says, showing a wisdom well beyond her years.
The first step to getting to know the real MacInnes is through her debut single, “Struck,” where she definitely reveals herself, forcefully declaring, “No fear to meet my creator/If I fail, I’m not a failure.” Yes, she is vulnerable. But she also makes it clear she isn’t someone you mess with.
She is damn proud of that message, even if it surprised her as much as anyone. “I didn’t think I would write songs that were empowering. [But] I love songs that are empowering,” she says. “I was in a shop the other day and a Florence and the Machine song [“Spectrum”] came on saying, ‘Say my name,’ and I was like that’s what I want my song to do. The feeling I just received when that comes on and I’m like ‘Oh, all of a sudden in this shop I can do anything. Get the horse outside, I’m going to get on the horse and I’m going to ride. I’m going to change the world.’ That experience of that song coming on while I’m in the shopping center can change the course of a day and therefore, everything. That would be my dream for the destiny of my songs.”
So, imagine her joy when she heard from friends who heard the song before release it had done for them what “Spectrum” did for her. “My friend said to me, ‘Your music makes me want to be disorganized and not in a way of not having my things together. It makes me want to be chaotic in the best way.’ I think the music is like a feminine chaos. It’s not conservative,” she says. “I want women to feel like they can get on a horse and ride anywhere they want to go.”
Most importantly “Struck” gave her that feeling that she could go anywhere and do anything.
“I didn’t know that I had the strength I had until I listened to ‘Struck’ back and I went ‘Whoa, that feels like a promise to myself, and I better fucking keep that promise,’” she says.
The song was finished six months ago. Has she kept the promise? “One hundred percent.”
