Art pop
Charlotte Brandi with a new album at the start
Charlotte Brandi is back with the second studio album of her solo career. photo
© Annika Weertz/Promotion-Werft/dpa
“Your antipathy amazed me for a long time, now everything makes sense, you’re just afraid of women,” Charlotte Brandi sings in the opener of her new album “An den Nightmare”. The long-time experienced artist, who was already successful with the duo “Me and My Drummer” before her solo career, is excited. There were many firsts in the production of her second album: the first production completely without men, the first feminist concept album and everything in German instead of English.
“Your antipathy amazed me for a long time, now everything makes sense, you’re just afraid of women,” Charlotte Brandi sings in the opener of her new album “An den Nightmare”. The long-time experienced artist, who was already successful with the duo “Me and My Drummer” before her solo career, is excited. There were many firsts in the production of her second album: the first production completely without men, the first feminist concept album and everything in German instead of English.
The album is anything but boring. The 37-year-old combines experimental art pop sound with feminist lyrics. “My music fills a gap in the German musical landscape and finds itself somewhere between Hildegard Knef and Schubert in a new way of writing poetry,” said the artist aptly in an interview with the German Press Agency. She orientates herself on the American indie scene, which she translates musically with a “very sweet mix of old nineties influences and seventies vibes” including detours into medieval sounds.
The title of the album is inspired by the feminist anthology “Your homeland is our nightmare”. “I found this juxtaposition so exciting that one person’s goal in life can develop into another’s nightmare,” says the artist. Her nightmare would probably be a conservative lifestyle – housewife, children, garden fence.
encourage women
Nevertheless, she distances herself from her lyrics when she sings about a torn present, death, fear and money. “The lyrical me is not the real me,” says Brandi with a smile. But what was important to her in every text: her own feminism, “which guides me like a navigation system”.
Because the album is primarily intended to encourage women to implement more projects with female artists. “It should also be a statement, a symbol and a door opener,” says Brandi. “For young people and also for young girls who are enthusiastic about music and think: What? There was no man with the music? You’re allowed to do that?” Even if the search for female musicians was not easy, since the industry is still very male-dominated.
She herself has advanced the production above all artistically. “For example, I didn’t have to flatter a man’s ego first before we could get started. It was much more focused and efficient.”