Charlie Hickey's Positive Aspirations
On the indie musician's new record 'Could've Been Anyone'
Charlie Hickey was only twenty when he dropped his first EP Count the Stairs. The six song collection was quietly released during lockdown in 2021 and quickly became my companion during long walks to the far bodega to get hazelnut coffee near the Morgan L train stop. “No Good at Lying” is a dream-like beautiful haze followed by the aching collage “Teen Feet Tall.” His first full-length, Nervous at Night, came out in 2022 on Saddest Factory, the indie darling from Phoebe Bridgers, another favorite of mine. It was another vulnerable hit reviewed by Holden Seidlitz for Pitchfork and garnering press in Rolling Stone. Produced by Marshall Vore, the record marked a new indie folk vanguard working his way through Pasadena and the Midwest through intricate and elegiac songs. In his down time, Hickey produces other artists (“My Heart is a Bloodhound” is great) and listens to podcasts.
Hickey’s new album, Could’ve Been Anyone, is a self-released sequel produced by Jonathan Rado, that hews towards the vintage timeless rock of The National and Fleetwood Mac. Rado is one-half of the band Foxygen and has produced records for The Killers, Weyes Blood, Beyonce, Whitney, and Father John Misty. Hickey’s Could’ve Been Anyone is a story-driven record, moving away from the Elliot Smith-inflected sound of Nervous at Night towards new sonic experiments and imaginative narrators. Jealous believers and faithful lovers. There are still plenty of earworms: “Death Grip” and “Feel Nothing” have both been on repeat for me the past few weeks, over and over. Sadness comes in many candy-coated pop-rock forms. “Nikita” is a heartbreaker coated in gorgeous, looping melodies. Break-ups and anxiety, sad high schoolers and losing out, Diet Coke addictions and numbing out. This is the standard Gen Z search for meaning in the digital static of our failing capitalistic society. “Jesus Pieces” takes on the modern search for religion by pondering the tent revival of Catholicism present in cultural phenomena like Red Scare and Dimes Square—replete with a clever twist. All his lyrics find ways to reinvent traditional ideas of vulnerability, twisting the knife on depression-core by delving deeper into the wound, asking for more than the kinds of truisms we vomit in therapy. “Wrapped your life around me, I'm a telephone pole/Yeah, we're totaled, yeah, I know, but I don't want to go home,” he croons on “Missing Years.” If such pained relationships dominated his first album, his new record finds him pondering missed connections and self-definition. On “Describe,” he sings out his thesis: “I want to burn the bridge between what I say and what I mean.”
Could’ve Been Anyone finds Hickey being in control of his vibe, pondering the way vulnerability can be both a cliche and a weapon. I was glad to get the chance to talk to him about his new record, an incredible album and one I deeply believe in. Easily one of my favorite releases of the year and it’s only March. No skips. We connected shortly after “Cash In” debuted as the second single off the album and chatted about the possibility of doing an IRL interview. I debated asking him to ride the swan boats around the lake—a line from “Death Grip”—but decided against it. When I finally arrived to LA a few months after our first chat, we went to a pricy brunch spot in Highland Park. (We even got interrupted a few times by welcome friends like Hickey’s drummer Ian Meltzer.) We spoke about his new album, masculinity, the pitfalls of touring, The 1975, and hyperpop.
Grace Byron: What have you been listening to lately?
Charlie Hickey: I've been listening to this podcast called Blink. It’s sort of just this guy recounting his life story, which is essentially that he was like a heroin addict and he was diagnosed with a very rare brain disease, and he was in a coma for a long time, and everybody thought he was brain dead, but he wasn't. He was in excruciating pain and also was just sitting there listening to everybody talk about how he was going to die, but he couldn't move or say anything. My girlfriend (Ella Jane) turned me on to it.
GB: Is it science-y?
CH: I don’t know if it’s science-y. It’s fun. I also listen to a lot more light and funny podcasts too. I don’t have as good an answer to what music I’ve been listening to. A lot of random stuff like early 2000s hip-hop. I’m very into the technical part of music. How it sounds sonically, how music has changed.
GB: When you’re producing do you try to stick to one sound or do you try to work with a variety of genres?
CH: I feel like the stuff I’m usually getting called to work on is stuff that’s closer to my wheelhouse. More like pop. Which I think is fun. I really actually live in that space. There’s also stuff that’s almost a little more hyperpop too. I mean, I love SOPHIE and all the classics. Maybe that’s a little on the nose but I mean I like 100 gecs and stuff that’s coming out and I remember thinking at the time this is the coolest thing ever.
GB: How was working with “Espresso” co-writer Steph Jones on “Death Grip?”
CH: I love Steph so much. She’s just become one of my really good friends. She’s sort of become like an older sister figure in my life. She was friends with my friend Marshall [Vore], who introduced me. He was like I think you should write with my friend Steph and it became this sort of unlikely collaboration. I think she’s so talented and she’s just a great songwriter. I feel like we bring things that are pretty different to the table. She comes from the world where she’s a pop songwriter which obviously isn’t some separate category—it’s all music—but she’s definitely really talented at constructing a chorus or melody in a way maybe indie people don’t have the chops for. I feel like I’ve gained chops for that watching her.
I also worked with this artist Bülow on “Cash In.” She also does a lot of pop songwriting and has her own project. We hadn’t ever really met but we were set up on a blind date and we just ended up writing that song. She also wrote “Texas Hold Em” on the new Beyonce record which I imagine she knew at the time but probably wasn’t allowed to say. Jonathan Rado, who produced my record, also worked on the Beyonce record.
GB: What was it like working with Rado on the record?
CH: I mean, it was awesome. I love him. He’s just so talented and a free spirit when it comes to music. He really lives outside the computer which is cool because that was never a way I had worked. We were doing a lot of things live, to tape. I don’t fetishize that stuff but it was also fun and makes you think about the process completely differently. I think I’m used to being in settings with producers where you’re under pressure to deliver something that sounds done and loud enough for A&R by the end of the day. Rado doesn’t really operate in that system.
GB: How did you end up writing such a story-based record? As opposed to something more confessional. Do you feel like it’s easier to write when you’re in a stable place in life?
CH: I’ve always written kind of story times. What I have to talk about in my own life is just limited sometimes. I’ve never felt super compelled to write or make music when I’m really not doing well. I think it’s easier when you have a little more of a head on your shoulders—a little bit of perspective, yeah? Maybe then you can put yourself back in that place.
GB: What was it like to go from releasing something with a label to self-releasing Could’ve Been Anyone?
CH: The process was really different. A lot of the cast of characters that were involved were different. A lot of the writing I did on my own. I also wrote with new people. I think we definitely took more stylistic risks, not that there weren’t anyone on the first record. I think that record lived pretty firmly in a genre that I was comfortable with. I decided all the singles on my own. It felt pretty clear which songs were the most important to me.
GB: Do you feel like there’s a cohesive message to the record?
CH: I’ve been asked that a couple times recently so I’ve had to think on it.
GB: No is also a valid answer haha.
CH: No, I also feel like there’s the kind of thing I can see in retrospect. Maybe unpacking what this kind of preconceived notion of vulnerability is and how that relates to music and songwriting. I think we’re often connecting to stuff or people based on this kind of shared weakness or shared weakest parts of ourselves. Some of the songs are kind of about relationships that are kind of based on this kind of sad culture of indie folk. There’s part of this record that’s questioning that a little bit, or questioning whether that [vulnerability] is always positive.
GB: We were talking a bit about the lyrics before this too—the distance between what you want and getting it, between how you see yourself and how others describe you. These different gaps of vulnerability and visibility, like on “Describe.”
CH: I think “Describe” is definitely about the feeling of putting yourself out there and being perceived wrong. I guess I’ve always felt like there’s a little bit of dissonance between who I am in my personal life and how I might seem to somebody on the internet or whatever.
GB: What were some of the influences on the record? You mentioned Tusk by Fleetwood Mac as a possible precursor of “weird pop.”
CH: That still feels true. I love pop music so much. Fleetwood Mac is such a good example. There’s an element of being able to perceive the mess—kind of hearing the coked-outness of the process. In modern music, things are just often very pristine. Not to romanticize coke or anything like that. But I don’t know I like the idea of things being a little rougher.
GB: Are there other modern influences?
CH: So many. I mean I always love Matt Beringer of the National. He’s definitely one of my favorite lyricists.
GB: Was it different to approach writing lyrics on this record?
CH: I think the first record was almost entirely lyrically focused. On this record, the lyrics were important but there was more sonic experimentation, melodies and stuff, you know.
GB: You said before you felt like you had to make the best record of all of time. Now with this one…
CH: Well I think that’s true. I think I still wanted to make the best record. Now I don’t know about next time. This is the last time I’m doing that haha.
GB: Can you talk to me about the song “Kansas City?” You wrote it on tour?
CH: I did start writing that song when I was on tour. It's probably, I think Kansas City was like the oldest song on this record. I had been through a breakup recently, and it's kind of about just like this weird feeling of being in transit, but also having just had this big event happen at home, so you're kind of just on a break from reality and kind of questioning. I think that song is a lot about questioning your own judgment.
GB: Was Kansas City just a place that it was taking place in? Or do you Yeah?
CH: I was just literally in Kansas City when we had an off day. We're in Kansas City, and some friends of ours were playing a show.
GB: How are you feeling about touring and the industry and being an independent artist right now?
CH: I mean, I think there's a lot of really nice things about being an independent artist, because if something you do really reaches a lot of people, I think that you can stand to profit more as an independent artist honestly. Everybody I know who’s an independent artist is working another job. I don't mind the idea of working another job or doing other things, you know, because thankfully there are other things that I love to do within music. I’ve come a long way on how much interest I have in, kind of, being, completely at the whim of the industry and doing whatever I can to [succeed] like losing money to go on tour. I think a lot of these things are more optional than we know. I'm, no longer interested in putting myself in really precarious positions, because I just don't think, I don't know, I don't think it's worth it. I need it to be fun and enjoyable. It had become a really stressful thing and I had to have a big Come down from that, almost, completely in order to be able to do it again. You know, you can romanticize the idea of being a hustler for the rest of your life, but I don’t find that to be the way.
GB: You’ve mentioned The 1975 as a big influence before. What’s your favorite song?
CH: “Looking for Somebody to Love.” I love the records, I love the production. I love anything that’s referencing the 80s and just kind of fun.
GB: Do you think there are any healthy Gen Z models of masculinity? Something healthy but not so fragile?
CH: I still don’t know the answer. I feel like when I was kind of trying to brand myself more this was something I was trying to answer. That was part of how I was feeling really disconnected from how people were perceiving me. I think I was obsessed with this question of what is a positive aspiration for a male artist. I guess I don’t know. Probably the answer is you shouldn’t really think about that.
GB: Matty Healy?
CH: No, absolutely not. No offense if he’s reading.
GB: We’ll come back to it. How did you come up with the title for the record?
CH: At first I wanted to do something like long, like Fiona Apple. I was going to call it: “When we die/I hope we go/to another bar,” which is a line from “Jesus Pieces” but that didn’t make it. We just went with a more natural-sounding title in the end.
GB: Have you felt the pressure of trying to perform on social media as a musician—or a brand?
CH: Yeah, I have felt pressure. But like I was kind of saying before I had to almost officially choose my own sanity. I post whenever I have a show. Or have a song coming out. But I’m not putting something up for the purpose of trying to make it go viral. I think that’s just a slippery slope. I’m not trying to be a purist or be like don’t sell out. In reality, it’s not even selling out. Even if people stream your song a bunch of times… I don’t know. If I was getting paid every time I made an Instagram Reel I’d do it ten times a day. Sure. But why would I do that? As an adult? No offense.
A few days after our interview, Charlie texted me his male role models:
Stevie Wonder
Or Kendrick Lamar
lol
incredible choices, I text back.
Image: Charlie Hickey album cover.
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