Charlotte Day Wilson Has Found Her Flow State

Charlotte Day Wilson is nearing her final form. The Toronto-born singer-songwriter and producer has been a “warden of the old school” for almost a decade, interpolating relationship anxiety with artfully atmospheric intervals of jazz, neo-soul, and post-’Rapture’ R&B that sentimentalize both ‘Innervisions’ and ‘Diamond Life’. There’s ‘Work’ and ‘Find You’; the emotive outpourings of ‘CDW’ and ‘Stone Woman’; the collabs with BadBadNotGood, Kaytranada, Syd, SG Lewis, and Lil Silva; that ‘Fair Trade’ sample that lives rent free; and now ‘Cyan Blue’, out May 3rd via XL Recordings, which arms the 90s standards of 2021’s ‘Alpha’ with a reintroduction to her flip on traditional soul.  

“Time is passing by so quickly,” Wilson admits via her home in Toronto, in between Madrid Open sets and promoting a local sando pop-up. “But I want to do this for the rest of my life. I don’t know what it will look like at any given chapter of my life, but I definitely feel like it’s just the beginning.”

‘Cyan Blue’ is, in any intimate setting, Wilson’s best work to date. The 13-track effort, inspired by a newfound creative openness and a personal experience with synesthesia, drifts into a different chromism of melancholia with spacey Hi Records thumpers (‘My Way’), irresistibly smooth love notes (‘Dovetail’), and summer dazes that sting like the end credits of ‘Flower Boy’ (‘Do U Still’). It’s Wilson’s first project that isn’t self-produced – thanks to longtime collaborator Jack Rochon’s expertise at turning samples into digital euphoria – and while it unpacks romantic phrasings that magnify the timelessness in her voice, it’s her free-forming into a new zone that’s ever-evolving. 

With the new album leading into a North American tour that concludes with Montréal Jazz Fest, we caught up with Wilson to discuss her time in Laurel Canyon, writing with Leon Thomas and Snoh Aalegra, her obsession with love, and why ‘Cyan Blue’ is a record that ‘knocks’ in the car.

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Last October, you posted on Twitter: “I am in the wilderness. You are in the music in the man’s car next to me”. How much have you learned about yourself through your own music and the music you have consumed throughout the past decade of your life? 

I’ve learned a lot. The main thing that I’ve learned is what you listen to, and also I guess for me as an artist, what you create does expose truths about yourself subconsciously – I think, during the writing process. It can be really interesting to go back and listen to music that I wrote years ago with a new understanding and a new context to interpret my lyrics through, so it’s really amazing. 

Obviously I’ve been really lucky to be able to sustain a career in this industry for as long as I have because it’s a tough industry and it’s never like any year or any day is not a given. So I’m lucky to be here at all, but it’s also just been cool to amass a body of work that I feel really proud of. Just to continue to be able to add to that repertoire is really exciting and I feel like that I’m in a place in my career now where I can veer left and right, and not feel like I have to do one thing, you know? I feel like I have learned a lot about myself through music and established a version of myself that everyone can kind of grasp, but now I’m excited to be able to expand on that, you know?

Since your songs have always carried an emotional weight to them, would you agree that the relationships we find ourselves in are meant to build character and define who we’re meant to be in the future?

Oh yeah, I definitely agree. Not to be corny, but everything happens for a reason and no matter what, we are conscious of what we take away from any given relationship. Like I think it’s all for character building and I don’t know – I’m a believer of destiny to be honest and I think whether it’s a way of coping with the things that come our way or not, I believe that everything happens for a reason. No regrets ever in this life is basically how I try to live. 

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What initially shaped that perspective for you?

I guess just coming to a place now where I feel very in control of my emotional state. I feel like I’m in a place of acceptance and knowing that no matter what happens, basically, I’ll always be okay. I’m very blessed to have a very loving family and group of close friends, and I think having that foundation of love allows me to kind of go through the external experiences of my life and know that they are all kind of like… nothing will rock me at this point, basically, you know?

How important is it to establish those relationships as you get older?

Yeah, big time. I really do think friends and family are important. To me, my loved ones are the people who hold it down for me and on any given day – no matter what happens with work or anything else – if you have your people in your corner, you’re good. 

In terms of the production on your second album ‘Cyan Blue’, what was it like working with Jack Rochon compared to your initial and later recording sessions for ‘Alpha’?

It was a completely different experience for me which was really fun. It’s fun to try something new at this stage in my career. My whole thesis for this new project wasn’t necessarily any sort of concept in terms of the content and lyrics, but my thesis was just I want to have fun making it. Working on ‘Alpha’ and ‘Stone Woman’, I love that music and I’m proud of it but it wasn’t always fun to work on because I spent so much time alone laboring over the granular details of the work. 

I learned a lot in that process and I’m really glad that I did it because now I feel like as a producer, technically I can kind of do whatever. Any vision I have I can generally achieve production-wise on my own. But it’s just time-consuming and it can be lonely, and I was working on ‘Alpha’ during the pandemic so that was a lot of alone time already. Working with someone else – Jack specifically because I love him so much, he’s such an amazing human, an amazing collaborator, amazing musician, producer, everything. It not only accelerated the recording process, but it also made it way more fun. Just like sharing that experience with someone felt really comforting for me. 

Did you have any premeditated goals for the album before you started recording?

No premeditated goals. We did try to allow ourselves to throw paint at the wall and not worry too much about how it dried out. We were just kind of like let’s just use a ‘first thought, best thought’ approach and know that we trust our instincts. Because you know when you are making music, there are literally endless options of how you can approach anything and when I was working on ‘Alpha’, I kind of indulged in that approach too heavily. I would make up to 10 different versions of one song – I would strip it down to just the vocal stem and reproduce the song, basically remix the song 10 times to find the ‘best version’ of the song. Which, you know, it’s honestly fun and it’s a cool challenge but it’s a different approach and maybe not the most beneficial in terms of time spent. With this one, the goals were “Let’s not edit too heavily. Let’s just trust our instincts”.

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What influenced you to move on from your perfectionist tendencies? And are you still harsh on yourself when it comes to your creative intuition?

I think I have a standard that I hold myself to that is probably, generally, pretty harsh at times. But I think what motivated me to switch my process up was that I didn’t know if I was having fun, and with this project, conceptually to a certain extent and in my life and my approach with everything, I’m trying to connect with my inner child. I think we are who we are from a very young age and the further we stray from that inner child, for me personally, I feel disconnected from myself. And something that I always loved doing as a child and even as a teenager and a young adult before I really had an established career in music, was entering into a flow state with music – just having a state and feeling of play and deep imagination. And also collaboration, having fun with friends. 

That’s how most people get into music because it’s a fun thing to do with friends, and the further I got away from that, I felt disconnected from myself and as a result, I think music suffers when you’re not having fun making it. I was just trying to get back to a place of joy in the process and I definitely achieved that so for me I hope that the album does well, of course, but I also just know that I had a great time making it and it’s a success in my eyes because it was a joy to make. 

How do those recording sessions compare to your collaborations with Snoh Aalegra & Leon Thomas? And how did they add a different dimension to their own recordings?

First of all, Snoh is just a lovely person with an amazing voice. She has been one of my favourite voices for a while so I’m super grateful to have her on the record. I’ve known her for a while and it was kind of one of those things where it’s like, “When are we going to work together? When are we going to do something?”. It finally happened and I’m super grateful for her addition to the new record, and the same goes with Leon. I like writing with other people because while you might have a loose understanding of what you’re writing about, there’s kind of a gray space of overlap where you’re like, “Are we singing about the same thing? How do our two perspectives meet on this loose topic we’re both singing about?”. My favourite thing about music is when something is not explicitly spelled out for us as a listener and I enjoy having some ambiguity, and I think that’s what happens naturally when you’re working with another lyricist. You are not going to approach the same topic the same two ways so the ambiguity between those perspectives is what kind of inspires me and propels me to continue finding new stories within the story we’re already telling. 

How long have you had a home studio in Laurel Canyon in California? And what was it like writing and recording in a creative space that’s a little less familiar?

I don’t actually have a home studio in Laurel Canyon. I did set up a smaller recording setup in the house that I was renting but we recorded most of the music at Jack’s studio in Studio City. I was based in Laurel Canyon and working on things every once in a while from the cabin – but mostly driving through the hills in my little old ‘90s Beemer that I bought for $2,000 and picking Jack up in the morning and heading to his studio. I think that setting… I don’t know. I enjoy romanticizing my circumstances in life because, again, I enjoy having an active imagination and being somewhere like Laurel Canyon where’s there such a rich musical history, it was nice to lean into that history and the imagination of all the other people who have driven through those hills and found stories and been inspired in those settings. Also, I think staying somewhere that isn’t my home… I find it really helpful for the creative process. Just staying somewhere that’s not your everyday routine. 

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With Toronto having its own abundance of creativity and community, was it a challenge at all to write an album without having that familiar collaborative environment in your orbit? 

I mean Jack is such a familiar Toronto person for me that I think that’s what grounded me. I don’t think I could have done it with someone who I wasn’t as familiar with. I think Toronto comes with me everywhere I go and another nice thing about the entire Toronto music community is that we always find each other in other cities too. I would also say that my Toronto music community no longer really connects in Toronto, we connect elsewhere. I don’t know what that says but I think maybe people have a similar thing with me where it’s helpful to leave the city and just leave the routine of home to tap into a 24/7 creative headspace. 

What’s the inspiration behind the song ‘Do U Still’?

Well, funnily enough, you know how I’m talking about this state of play? That song came about basically as a joke. Jack and I were done working for the day and I think that maybe I was taking longer to pack up than Jack was so he was ready to leave. I was just putzing around the studio, packing up or something, and he sat down at the piano and started playing a couple chords and I just started it as a joke, singing but also kind of like screaming those lyrics [laughs]. I don’t know. They just kind of came out of me, you know? I’m not going to say exactly what they’re inspired by but it did come as a joke, like “Do you still love me?”. Just as a joke, you know? And then he was just laughing and I was like “Honestly, I kind of feel like maybe that’s a song”. Again, the creative process is so different every time and that one felt very different. As much as it’s about hoping that someone still loves you, it’s a lighthearted tune that started in a very lighthearted manner. 

With “I Don’t Love You” being a small reminder that leaving love can be just as inspiring as finding it, is it difficult at all to write about lost loves and the heartache that can come with failed relationships? Or is it just a part of the process of finding peace in yourself?

I don’t find it difficult to write about – I think it’s super cathartic to write about. But releasing it is sometimes a different story. Because usually, you know, there’s some person that it’s inspired by and I do believe that in order for a grieving process to be complete, you usually do have to cut off communication and when I have this platform as a songwriter to put out my music, it’s almost as though there’s still a conversation, you know? It’s a bit of an odd privilege but also a responsibility that you have to tell a story from your perspective and I just hope sometimes that people know that I’m only singing from my perspective and that there’s always an element of storytelling and it’s not 100% rooted in whatever is factually going on in my life. I squint at reality all the time just to follow wherever the path of least resistance is taking me in the songwriting process. 

For me, it’s one of those things where I might think that I have healed from something but then I start writing a song and these lyrics flow out of me, and my subconscious is banging on the door of my vessel to tell me that I still need to process a couple of things. I think it’s cool to be kind of exposed to things within your subconscious that you maybe thought were all well and good and you clearly have to get out somehow. 

One interesting line from the single ‘I Don’t Love You’ is the lyric: “It’s more peaceful being heartbroken than crying every night for you”. When did you come to terms with that realization? And how has it changed your perspective on love and relationships?

That’s a good question. I think we all have different understandings of what love is and I have, in many phases of my life, thought that love is just about perseverance no matter what and loyalty no matter what, and to acknowledge that love is just actually letting someone be their full self and encouraging their own kind of growth as a person… I don’t know. I feel like that’s what real love is to me and while being heartbroken is an awful feeling, I do think that finding peace within yourself can be cathartic. I don’t know. Being stuck in something negative is way worse. I don’t know… I don’t have a good answer for that [laughs].

While it’s equally beautiful and complicated, do you still have an obsession with love?

I do, of course, because I believe that love is the meaning of life. Simply put. I don’t really care if it sounds cliche, but I live my life with a pretty strong acceptance and understanding that without love, there isn’t a purpose to any of this. And ‘love’ extends to platonic relationships, friendships, romantic relationships, and familial relationships, and to love well and be loved well is the thing that makes me feel the most complete as a person and the most at peace and at ease. It makes me feel like I can enjoy every day knowing that I’m surrounded by love. So yeah, I would say that hell yeah I’m still obsessed with love [laughs].

While ‘Cyan Blue’ captures all shades of the human experience, the artwork, inserts, and tour posters show you experiencing moments of solitude inside of a car. What inspired this particular theme and how does it fit the record’s subject matter as a whole?

So I almost exclusively listen to music in the car and when we were approaching the production, how we wanted the music to sound and feel and even how it was going to be mixed, it was really important for me that it ‘knocked’ in the car. I wanted to be true to that approach and express that through other visual mediums. But also, like the story I was telling you, about just driving through the hills to get to the studio, I would say those are some of my fondest memories of working on the new album. Being in the studio is amazing, but I just felt so lucky and excited every morning to wake up and get into this old beater BMW that I bought just to have while I was in Los Angeles where my partner lives and while I was working on this project. Just something about getting into this car and putting the windows down and listening to whatever music we were working on the previous day in the studio – getting super inspired and ready to work on the music the next day, and pick Jack up and just kind of catch up with him and have our little morning regroup. That car was a special space for us in kind of like synthesizing our plans for the day and our inspirations and just listening to things together. 

I also wanted to show there is ‘movement’. There is motion and I am also letting my hair down in this project. I’m free. I’m not bogged down by a stillness or a stoicness that I maybe used to lean into a little bit more. I just get very inspired by the car and the car is also where I came into music in a big way. When I played hockey as a child, my dad would drive me every single day and we’d listen to music and analyze the music and talk about it. That’s also where I started learning how to sing in harmony as my dad would just point out the harmonies and I would start singing along. The car has always been a special place of music for me. 

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Because of their similarities, did Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ have an impact on ‘Cyan Blue’?

With Joni definitely being a Laurel Canyon lady and having her amazing ‘Blue’ album… like I said, connecting to history and connecting to those who came before us sparks my own imagination. I’d say sonically, I don’t think I was super inspired by the music of ‘Blue’, but it is obviously one of the best albums of all-time in my opinion. I do like feeling connected to the past and, obviously, I would never try to be in any sort of similar conversation with musicians like Joni Mitchell and how influential and impactful they have been. But I am accepting of the fact that I like this idea of being influenced by canonical works. Maggie Nelson’s ‘Bluets’ is a big influence for me with this album.

If you could have an hour-long conversation with your past self from 10 years ago, what would you talk about? And what wisdom would you want to impart on your younger self?

Really just that everything is going to be okay. My mom found a letter that I had written to myself – I think I was like 17 or something – and it was in an envelope and it was closed, and it said “To 27-year-old Charlotte” and she gave it to me recently and I read it, and I think that the things that I wanted for myself and that I had hoped I would have found at that point was to find love and to be happy. And I thought that those were such beautiful but also heartbreaking things as they implied there was a lack thereof at that point in my life. So I think I would say to myself “Hey, look, those things that you’re longing for and that you’re wishing for – they come true”, and that there’s so many other things that you could never in your wildest dreams imagine that will happen. Just to impart some reassurance. 

What wisdom do you hope to impart on others with ‘Cyan Blue’? And is there a lesson or realization that you hope listeners can take with them into the summer months?

The wisdom and the message that I hope people can come away with in terms of this project – they might not know it if they don’t read the interviews – but really, what I want people to know is that this shit has to be fun. You gotta’ have fun making it and if it feels like you’re fighting with the music, then there’s no point in doing it. Find whatever circumstances it is that you need to have a Tabula Rasa brain going into each session in order to enter into a good headspace and just enjoy the process. Because life is short and just wishing away time or ‘stressing away’ time is selling ourselves short of the joy of the beautiful thing that is making music and making art. Whatever your rituals are with listening to the album in a car, number one is definitely turn it up loud. 

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‘Cyan Blue’ will be released on May 3rd.

Words: Joshua Khan
Photography: Emily Lipsom

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