Charlotte Sands on Nashville’s Pop Evolution, Her Creative Community and the Good Now EP

Alt/pop queen Charlotte Sands may be Nashville-based, but she’s hitting the road heavyweight-hard. A peak at her upcoming schedule reveals performances at Lollapalooza, Life is Beautiful, a fall US run supporting The Band CAMINO + Bad Suns, before shifting into an European arena run with 5 Seconds of Summer. Just the past year, Charlotte notched her for US headline tour and shared the stage with Yungblud, My Chemical Romance, The Maine, Simple Plan and PVRIS.

We caught up with Charlotte to talk about her new Good Now EP, which focuses on her struggle with disassociation. We also chatted about the evolution of Nashville’s constantly growing non-country scene, her creative collaborators and how life in Nashville grounds her.

You’ve been a part of Nashville’s alt/pop scene for years. How do you think the pop / alternative community has developed?

I’m so grateful and proud to be a part of Nashville’s music scene and especially to be a part of its growing non-country scene. I moved to Nashville in 2014 and at that time I was considered a country artist because there weren’t really any other options or boxes to fit anyone into. That has changed so much over the last few years especially, and I have so many friends that make completely different music from each other and have thriving careers in this city which is really exciting and amazing to watch.

I think the music scene has changed in the same way the bar scene has. When I moved here there were no DJs, no clubs, no electronic music, there was only country music playing in bars from 10am – 3am. Over the course of the 4 years I was bartending on Broadway I started noticing bars switching from cover bands to DJs on the weekends as well as bands adding more covers of pop songs to their sets.

It made me realize that the Nashville music scene and bar scene had a common thread, which is that at a certain point, everyone just wants to have a good time and enjoy themselves and be able to dance. I think the tourists’ demand for upbeat music and a place to dance actually helped create opportunity for different types of music being played in Nashville and therefore more opportunity for artists in different genres. It’s changed and evolved so much and I’m so excited for the music that will be created and celebrated here in the future.

Tell us about some of your collaborators. What’s it like working with Megan Redmond, Sam Sumser, Sean Small and Danen Rector?

Megan Redmond is a phenomenal writer, singer, and human being. I’m so grateful for her friendship and talent over the last few years, so many songs I love wouldn’t exist without her. Sam and Sean are incredible writers / producers and work harder than anybody I know. They’re constantly ahead of whatever the next wave is in the industry and are always striving to make something interesting and different which continues to inspire me so much. I’m so lucky to get to work with such amazing people.

Danen and I have been working together for about 4 years now which is so wild to me. When we started working together we were both in a similar place of not really knowing where we fit into the scene here and we were able to figure that out together which has been a really cool experience. We both grew up listening to similar music so being able to write songs in that lane together with no goal other than having fun and making something we were proud of has been really wonderful. We still do that to this day and are able to celebrate our wins together and live a really incredible life that we’re lucky enough to experience at the same time. It’s a really cool friendship to have and I couldn’t be more proud of him for all of his success individually as well.

Diving into the EP’s themes of disassociation and anxiety, what about life in Nashville is grounding to you?

Nashville has always been the place where I feel the most grounded and the most calm. It still feels like a small town where I can run into friends at the grocery store or at a bar and be able to catch up with people whenever I’m back for a few days. It still feels really slow and simple to me which I love, even though it’s constantly growing so much. I think what’s most grounding to me is being close to nature and not feeling completely surrounded by a city or buildings at all times. Being able to drive 20 minutes to the lake and be on a boat is the dream for me, it almost feels like I get to finally live out the small town experience that I moved away from and I really love that.

Listen to a mix of Charlotte’s current Nashville favs, including VEAUX, John Harvie, Knox, Taylor Acorn and more!