‘Charm’ Is a Coming of Age Album for Your Early Twenties

Alison Kaiser

She/Her

Opinions Editor

9/9/24

The first time I saw Clairo in concert, I very nearly missed the show. It was 2019, the days of ‘Immunity’ when she was just gaining traction as an artist and playing a hometown show at a small club in Boston. I took the T with my best friend from her college to the Paradise Rock Club, in theory a half hour train ride. We talked over the staticky borderline nonsensical announcement that we had arrived at Ruggles, only noticing we’d missed our stop when we were approaching the end of the line. A brief anxiety and a $60 uber ride later, we made it to the venue in the middle of the song ‘Alewife’.

There’s a moment at the end of a really good show, when you’re eighteen and in a city with your best friend, when everything feels alive. For a time everything is ahead of you and nothing matters except the streetlights and the sound of a person you love singing badly on the walk home. To me, ‘Charm’ is a love letter to what comes after that feeling, a means of making sense of who you are when the magic starts to fade. When you’ve lived long enough to know regret, gratitude and yearning. Musically and lyrically, it’s equal parts mourning and celebration of the lessons you learn in your early twenties through relationships with others, self, and place. 

The singles from the album, ‘Nomad’ and ‘Sexy to Someone’, tell two sides of the same story. If you’ve ever taken the risk of ending a relationship in search of something more, ‘Nomad’ has a comforting familiarity. Clairo sings softly over warm strings as she confesses the ache of being half known, by not only her partner but herself. It takes a lot to realize you “have to find why you’d rather be alone than a stranger”, to follow the feeling that’s asking you to go deeper inward. And sometimes, right when you’ve decided to lean into loneliness to see what’s on the other side, you just want to feel ‘Sexy to Someone’, nothing more nothing less, to not take it all so seriously. You want to be noticed by a person who sees beauty in everyday life, acknowledged as the “Honey sticking to your hands, sugar on the rim”. You need a “Reason to get out of the house.” Something you can’t yet give to yourself. 

If you’re lucky, once or twice in your life you’ll meet someone and know you were meant to. ‘Juna’ and ‘Second Nature’ chronicle a feeling of coming home to a new person that leaves you no choice but to lay down your defenses and fall in. 

‘Charm’ is an easy listen, a soft and earnest effort that sounds like a phone call to an old friend.

Favorite tracks: Pier 4, Slow Dance, Nomad 

When to listen: At a coffee shop, after a one sided breakup, on the cusp of a big change.