CHARLOTTE MEADE
Words: Em Tobin
Images: Katy Bedford (@katwattle)
Charlotte Meade by Katy Bedford
Charlotte Meade’s music is visceral, steeped in nostalgia, pinpointing a moment suspended in time, held still for reflection before redirection. What Meade understands is the alchemic transmutation of memory, the salty lick of sweet summer oceanic waves, the veil of green and smell of rain before an afternoon hailstorm, a prophecy buried beneath the hardwood floorboards of a childhood home.
Charlotte Meade’s single, Isabelle, is a maturation of an artist grounded, ultimately, in love. Isabelle reflects upon the storytelling of a lost friendship, the pure-hearted pains of growing up and moving slowly from what was once a close, valued bond. Meade produces a layered world, within which she navigates the complexity of human connection and her relationship to it, encompassing the blue sea of fragility and vulnerability. A testament to her artistry, Charlotte Meade is never shy to stray from the compelling need to tell it how it is. Her rawness elicits the strangeness of emotion that rests upon the tombstone of grief and love. The heavy, humming lull of peculiar sadness is evident, despite what is, sonically, a conflictingly bubbly track.
Following the release of Isabelle, I caught up with Charlotte Meade to talk about the single, the rawness produced through authentic songwriting, maturing as an artist and with age, and elements of production with her band.
Charlotte Meade by Katy Bedford
EM: Hey Charlotte, thanks for catching up to talk about your single, Isabelle. Isabelle expresses a unique lyrical vulnerability, exploring the grief attributed to losing closeness with a close friend - how did you find space for intimacy throughout the writing process?
CHARLOTTE: That’s a good question. I was actually housesitting when I wrote the song. I was alone in a space that I had never written in before, and I think I was feeling a sudden sense of loneliness at the time that I felt really just gave me a reminder of some things that I was going through at the time. Recently, over the past couple of years, going into my twenties, I’ve come to realise that friendships do change when you move out of high school, and you lose closeness with people that you don’t expect to come; it’s something I really wanted to write about. My female friendships mean so much to me, and it was a hard thing to write about, but having that space within the house where I’d never written before, it all came together for me there.
EM: Being in your twenties can be a really gritty experience at times, watching close relationships shift. You’ve articulated this in such a raw way on Isabelle; what can you say about your experience growing as an person and musician?
CHARLOTTE: Definitely, being a solo artist, it’s really scary to be on your own and doing stuff like that, so I think my female friendships have been the most important thing to me in my experience. If I have feelings of loss of my friends, if I’m experiencing changes in relationships, it really does become apparent to me because I’m like, wow, these girls are my biggest support. Going out on my own as a solo artist and expressing my stories to the world, if my friendships are changing, it feels really real.
EM: Grief is an overwhelming emotion to navigate, yet simultaneously a feeling so well articulated on Isabelle. How did you navigate lyricism with sound to develop a nostalgic, vulnerable, and somewhat biographical track?
CHARLOTTE: I think this song actually was one of the first songs I wrote, musically, and did the sound for, but it had different lyrics. I feel like maybe there was a lot of time between the beginning of the writing process and the end where I got to sit with the song. I wanted to make it explicitly about who I was writing about, but also to cover it up with some fun things about eggs, so people don’t know what I was writing about. I feel like there’s this thing where you can be super explicit in what you’re talking about, and people know exactly what it is, but I feel like in this song, especially compared to some of my other songs, I’ve felt like I’ve put a bit of a barrier up. There’s some unpacking to do there, for the listener maybe.
Charlotte Meade by Katy Bedford
EM: The Isabelle music video, directed and filmed by Clea Pratt, features you and Tomorrow’s Forecast frontwoman Olive McCaugh. Drawing from a track exploring the loss of a friendship, what can you say about the friendships you do have, and how are you inspired by those around you within the Brisbane music scene?
CHARLOTTE: The music video was really fun. First of all, Clea did an amazing job, and I’m so grateful to Olive for being there with me all day in the hot sun. That’s a good question, especially with people like Clea and Olive working on that video with me. Clea has been my idol since I was fifteen, and I had this moment: we were on the beach, and the sun was setting, and Clea was behind the camera. I had this moment of, oh my god, this is what it’s all about. We’re all helping each other, and with the Brisbane music scene, I do feel like there is a strong sense of community and people helping each other, working with each other; everyone is in everyone’s bands. Having someone like Clea, who has been an integral part of the scene for so many years, and also Olive, who is doing so much with Tomorrow’s Forecast, it was so cool to have them work on the project with me and bring their experience to the video.
EM: I’m walking on the shells of the eggs that you eat scrambled is a stand-out lyric for me. You’ve used eggs as a recurring motif for the Charlotte Meade identity on Isabelle, including in your music video. What does the egg represent?
CHARLOTTE: Firstly, I feel like I need to give a shoutout to Bailey Abbato, who made the egg for me. We sat over ramen, and I showed her a stick figure drawing of me in an egg costume. I was like, I want to be an egg, and she was fully in, just like, hell yeah, let’s do this. The egg, in terms of the track, is definitely a motif for a friendship falling apart and trying to put things together again. There’s a sort of Humpty Dumpty-ness to it: I’m cracked open, lying on the beach, wishing things could go back to the way they were, but they just won’t, and I think the egg split open is a push and pull between wanting someone to fix it, but realising you will never be as close with that person as you once were.
EM: Isabelle pays homage to the maturation of the Charlotte Meade sound, featuring layered production and sustaining space for a focus on vocals. How have you developed and refined what is your signature sound through the experience of producing the track?
CHARLOTTE: I feel like working with Ali has definitely given me time to grow the sound that I’m trying to put out. For this track, actually, it was fun because it felt super low stress. We recorded it on a whim on a weekend in between a longer body of work; I’m recording a debut album, and it was caught in the middle. It didn’t feel like this big weight on me at the time, so it felt like I really got the time to sit with it, and we layered sound. We completely produced the track, and I listened to it a couple of weeks later, and I said to Ali, I don’t think it's done. We had to go back, and I added the Isabelle, can’t you tell, we’re not going well, and it felt really fun; it brought the track together. Having conviction in my decisions, and maybe in the first songs I recorded, I was apologising a lot. I don’t think you have to say sorry; if you want something to sound a certain way, just put yourself out there. Moving forward, I want to be confident in what I do and how I do it.
Charlotte Meade by Katy Bedford
EM: Can you walk me through working on the track with the live band? How was the process of collaborating with other Meanjin musicians?
CHARLOTTE: It’s awesome. I work with my drummer Alex from Special Features; I’ve got Charlie White on the guitar from Reno Ltd; Lily Wade plays in a lot of projects, including EJ Wood; I think she just recorded on Ticker Tape’s new release, and Karissa Liu’s on piano from Alison and Special Features. It’s a big crew of musicians from Meanjin, and it’s great. My process is always writing fully fleshed-out songs, and they all add parts; I tell them what I want them to play, and we put it all together. It’s really nice to have everyone’s points of view laid out on the track. I feel super supported, and there’s a lot of belief there. I really love the people I work with.
EM: What was the single, most significant takeaway from recording the track at Swampond Studios?
CHARLOTTE MEADE: Probably for this song, a funny one, but Ali and I, on the last day of finishing the song, we were kind of just having fun with it, and we were sitting next to each other, he was playing the synth line, and I was just screaming, friendship, connection, into a mic, and we were looping that. Something I love about recording with Ali is that we always go into this other world, where we can have this experience, and it’s so much fun. Just the biggest takeaway from that as well is that it's one of the most fun experiences I’ve had.
Charlotte Meade by Katy Bedford
EM: You’ve had quite an interesting 2026, playing live with the likes of Stella Donnelly, Rowena Wise, Asha Jefferies, and more recently at Cool Sun Fest. Do you have a favourite show or standout set you’ve played this year?
CHARLOTTE: Yeah, I feel like they were all different in their own way; it was honestly incredible to play with these types of artists, because honestly a lot of them have been an inspiration to me for many years. I do think the set that I played at Cool Sun with my band was a standout for me, just in terms of the actual performance itself. I felt like something clicked, and we had this experience with each other. I felt like I lost control a bit, in a good way, I think, and something changed. Everyone in the band, we all looked at each other like, what the hell was that? It was insane, playing in that kind of space as well; in the open, it was a beautiful experience.
EM: Your sound seems to reflect your personal evolution at the same time, creating deep vulnerability and rare, genuine rawness. As the project matures and stands grounded in aspects of identity, what direction do you aim to forge for the Charlotte Meade sound?
CHARLOTTE: Obviously, I’m writing a lot about experiences as a female in my early twenties. I think that comes with changes in friendships, family dynamics, and moving to a bigger city. I think moving forward, I would like to keep centering the female experience within this stupid patriarchal system. It’s funny because part of me is like, oh, I’d love to write a love song or a breakup song, but I think the problem is that boys just don’t inspire me. Genuinely, all I care about is the girls, and we run this. I just want to keep putting out the human experience. My goal is to make music that other people can process their reality in, and have a space to feel heard and comforted by it. I think I’ll just keep writing about that.
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