Charlotte Day Wilson Lets Her Imagination Run Free
Over the last decade, Wilson’s music project has blossomed into quite an illustrious career, with her songs sampled by major artists such as Drake, John Mayer, and James Blake. But, what’s kept Charlotte Day Wilson going? She tells us it's her childlike ability to access her imagination and what she describes as a state of play.
“Not only in my career and in my life as a musician, but in the rest of my life, I’ve realized that I feel the most at peace when I’m doing things that I’ve always loved since childhood.” She remembers being a child and being able to easily delve into who she is at her core to create something new derived from the known. “I just remember being a child and being able to sit on a chair and completely transform myself and my surroundings, you know? I could go anywhere by imagining. I think we still have that — maybe we don’t have as much time every day to access that, but I’m lucky enough to be encouraged even as an adult and a songwriter to get to that place.”
“I’m in a pursuit of trying to not roll off my emotional edges. That was what happened to me in the middle of my career — I didn’t really feel much, and I think it’s because I was dealing with being a young adult but also the intensity of being thrusted into the public through my career. I was experiencing some insanely exciting highs but also some very dark lows. In all of that, I thought ‘Is this too much?’” Wilson has learned to undo all of that and has gotten back to a place of feeling purely. “It’s really fun to see what happens when you don’t criticize yourself.” This comes through clearly on Cyan Blue, with its dreamy sound that feels uniquely and exclusively hers.
What started out as messing around in the studio with friend and co-producer Jack Rochon turned into, “Oh, are we making an album right now?” With Rochon’s help on the production side, Wilson had the freedom to create an album that she didn’t have to overthink. Where she typically would be playing all the instruments and handling all the production, she had more time to dive into lyricism and work on vocals for the record. “As much as most people know me as a singer, that’s not the thing I think of when I think of myself.” Wilson was put into piano lessons by her parents from an early age and learned classical technique before experimenting with her own sound. She tells me that this album felt like the first time she could focus on her vocals as the centerpiece, honing on that as her instrument — an exciting unlock for the songwriter who has largely self-produced her previous projects: 2016’s CDW, 2018’s Stone Woman, and her 2021 debut studio album Alpha. On this new record, she challenged herself to let go of previous processes and set a deadline for herself and Rochon, finishing the album in just a few months.
Wilson tells us that when making the record, “it felt like we would go into our playroom and get our toys [instruments] out and laugh and throw things at each other and throw ideas on the wall and let whatever came out stick on the wall and not feel like it needed to be anything different than how it came out naturally.” (I wish all jobs felt like this. Maybe she’s onto something.) With Cyan Blue, “first thought, best thought” was the approach, and Wilson and Rochon let themselves discover the outcomes of creating freely without criticizing themselves in the moment. The result is a deeply smooth 13-track album with Wilson’s ethereal, soulful vocals and expressive lyrics that feel distinctive but somehow don’t give away too much. Wilson writes songs in a way that doesn’t “edit the feeling” as she describes it — a mixture of deeply personal yet not overt. If there’s anything we can learn from Wilson and her creative process, it’s that our imagination never leaves us, but rather, it’s up to us to let go of inhibitions and tap into our childlike wonder. She’s definitely onto something.
Cyan Blue is out now on XL Recordings.
