Charli Lark doesn’t just make music. She builds worlds that heal past wounds through deeply humanizing nuances.
Charli Lark describes herself as “an intense girly,” and if you’ve spent any time with her music, you get it immedaitely. “I write and I sing electropop music,” she explains. “It’s pop but it leans eletro versus a more live sound. And I write about usually dark themes. I’m an intense girly and so that emotion is usually what’s driving behind all the stuff that I write.”
But there’s nothing one-note about Lark’s sound. Her latest single, “Gold Edged Tongue,” is as bold as its title suggests—a defiant anthem about seeing through manipulation and breaking free from its grip. It’s a track that pulses with high-gloss production and sharp lyrical clarity. “‘Gold Edge Tongue,’ and sort of the lyric ‘Gold Edge Tongue but the rest of you is black and white,’ came to me one day when I was writing,” she explains. “It’s about those people we all know. They’re manipulative, they’re like these charming liars that will use their words to lure you in and then cut you with it and you don’t even know you’re wounded until after.”
For Lark, the song became a personal reckoning. “We spend a lot of time in our life being controlled by people where if you get past the words and past the flash, there’s not really much underneath that,” she continues. “They’re not as powerful or as interesting as you might have thought. And so I kind of went off that theme… There’s such a freedom in that, in really recognizing that for what it is. Like, I see you, I get you.”
If you ask Charli what’s shaped her music, she doesn’t hesitate: it’s her life, in all its messy, complicated glory. “I’ve just had a lot of different kinds of life experience and it was just kind of how life thew itself at me,” she says. “To me it’s a layering effect. All the different pieces inform each other. It helps me to sort of understand myself better and the world better… It makes my life better to have all those different pieces, but it also, I think, makes my art better.”
Lark isn’t just an artist; she’s a single mom and a corporate worker balancing the grind of everyday life while chasing her creative ambitions. “I understand what it’s like to work a corporate job,” she empathizes. “I understand what it’s like to be a mom in a family that’s together and in a family that’s not together. I understand what it’s like pursuing this career that I’ve always wanted to do, but I got off the path and had to come back to it a little bit later.”
And while that experience fuels her music, it also gives her a kind of clarity. “I listened to so many rules about who I was supposed to be, where my value came from, what I needed to do to be loved, to belong, to be cool and interesting and respected,” she reflects. “That is really, honestly, what got me off the path… You don’t have to follow those rules, they’re made up. All you have to do is walk through them and they just disappear.”
There’s a tendency to dismiss electropop as slick, surface-level fun, but Charli Lark is quick to challenge that. “There’s a lot of great artists that a lot of people out there don’t really know that that’s electropop,” she explains. “It’s pop music that leans on electronic instrumentation and production and that’s all over what you’re listening to on all the streaming platforms and all the radio and whatever.”
Her favorite? Charli XCX. “She has a bunch of songs on BRAT that are incredibly vulnerable,” Lark compliments. “She talks about trying to decide whether she’s waiting too late to have a child. She talks about grief and the death of one of her closest friends and artistic collaborators. Even a song like ‘Apple,’ where everybody is doing the dance on TikTok—it’s about stuff that’s passed down through generational trauma.” Lark also shouts out Doechii and Lady Gaga, part of a lineup that reflect her deep appreciation and support for female artists.
The emotional core of Lark’s music goes beyond heartbreak anthems. It’s about healing. “Words are just words yet they are so, so powerful,” she says. “They can make such an impact on us and so to me the ways to combat that are to reconnect with yourself because that’s where the real truth is.”
Lark credits internal reflection—and nature—for helping her stay level-minded. “Being outside is really grounding,” she enforces. “Even if I can’t break away from a screen or whatever, if it’s just for a little bit to just go be outside in the air and the sun next to something tangible, to me that helps.”
It’s a survival strategy as much as it’s an artistic one. “I’m still working on [avoiding burnout], but I do think that being a whole person helps me,” she unravels. “Having all the other parts of my life help me to not get too burnt out in one area. That makes me feel like a whole human being, and keeps me really grounded also, and makes the art better.”
Returning to music after time away wasn’t easy—but it was necessary. “It’s not ever really too late and you can always circle back, you can always do it again, you can always come back to it,” Charli consoles. And in many ways, that’s the message behind “Gold Edge Tongue:” the power of reclaiming your story.
Still, she acknowledges the hurdles women face in music, especially in pop. “You’re expected to be perfect, but then also authentic, and you’re expected to be, like, there’s just a lot of… too much, not enough stuff,” she says. “That shows up in different places.”
But Charli isn’t here to play by anyone else’s rules. She’s building her career on her own terms, as an independent artist with a growing catalog and an eye on what’s next. “I’ve got a kick-ass music video for this song coming out,” she says, adding that more singles will follow into the summer. “I’m really excited about that. More music videos, and then I’m going to go away and do some more writing, and make some more music for the end of the year.”
And yes, there’s a possibility of a full-length project. “Maybe,” she teases, “maybe.”
Whatever’s next, it’s clear Charli Lark is here to stay. Her music pulses with honest sentiments and nuanced clarity, driven by hard-won wisdom and an unapologetic sense of self. “I’m just trying to connect with people who were like me at some stage,” she says. “And to express all of the emotion that just wants to flow through me and into something else.”
“Gold Edged Tongue” is available now on all streaming platforms. You can watch our full interview with Charli Lark below and stay up to date with her social platforms beneath!
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