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"I was always into pop music, but pop music with purpose and an edge, like the Pretenders and Elvis Costello," LA-via-Melbourne based singer and songwriter CHARLZ remembers. "Even Elvis Presley - music that was popular but had strong sense of the artist' voice coming through the music." Her deep voice, dusky melodies and deeper-still lyrics belie a wisdom and experience well beyond her years.

Growing up in progressive Melbourne, her supportive parents encouraged CHARLZ by sending her to arts-based schools, "the kind where they'd have animals in the classroom," she laughs. There, she realized her innate knack for coming up with stick-to-your-ears melodies. "They just always came very intuitively to me," she recalls. "I could hear a piece of music and immediately start singing something over it."

Her reputation as a pre-teen prodigy landed CHARLZ in Melbourne teen-pop duo Dash & Will when she was just 13. Thus began a music biz secondary school education that culminated a decade later opening for Justin Bieber's Australian tour in 2011. "I had a great introduction to the music industry," she says of her tenure as an almost accidental pop star. "But if anything, having a certain amount of success at a very young age made me realize that I have to create music I feel completely passionate about - then figure out how to find an audience. It's very important for me to respect what I do.”

After a few years of "dropping out of the music business and going through life," CHARLZ began working with fellow Melbourne-ian M-Phazes, the Grammy award-winning producer best known for his work with Eminem and Silverchair's Daniel Johns. Using songs written during her hiatus from the industry, they created some tracks that would see CHARLZ catch attention back on the music scene. These initial efforts were more than just promising, they were self-realizing. CHARLZ says, “Musically I made a conscious effort to express depth through the lyrics and music. I had to find what was creatively native to me and allow it to come through in the songs.”

At the same time, CHARLZ was finding her voice as a writer. "I hated being in school and that feeling of not being on level ground, that teachers inherently knew more than me. It just rubbed me the wrong way. Like, I know shit, too, y’know?" she says. "I wanted to be able to express that I knew things about the world intuitively just from being alive, and to be able to do that through a song came most naturally."

Since arriving in LA in 2015, CHARLZ has become a writing room darling, amassing a promising body of work including the ULTRA Records one-off dance hit "Chew Candy," with Australian producer Sunset Child, several major label writing placements, as well as her pulsing, melancholic new collaboration “To You,” produced by Spotify playlist favorites Lliam Taylor & Latroit.

It's her work with mau5trap’s man of the moment, ATTLAS, including featured vocals on last summer's "Jagged," the upcoming "Ensnared," as well as her forthcoming solo debut, "West LA" that she says comes the most naturally.



"I would have this beautiful process where I'd listen the track a few times and then this overwhelming feeling would well up inside and the words and story would just spill out," she says. "Something about ATTLAS' music I relate to strongly. Its depth more than dark, but it has pop sensibility," CHARLZ concludes. "It feels natural but its deep."