Meet Charlotte Dirckze

Photography by Sara Regan - HMUA by Angelo Kioumourtzis - Creative Direction and Styling by Elleni Yates

Charlotte was only 15 when she began her songwriting journey. After having made a pact with herself that she would “release her first song” by then ‘Dramatic’ came out in 2019 - a little experiment to see how her close peers would receive the single but little did she know it would transform into her career.

Now at 19 years of age, Dirckze reflected on how she spent her time during lockdowns writing and churning out music. Like most of us during the pandemic, Charlotte fell into the rabbit hole of DracoTok which inspired her biggest single ‘Broken Boys’. The overnight sensation spiked her Spotify listens from 14 listeners to 20k streams within the first 24 hours of release, leading to over 400k streams overall on the song. Shortly after, she released her debut EP ‘Facade’ which was very “close and meaningful to (her) as the collection of songs tells my story of growth and self-discovery as an artist” she reflects.

Since then, Charlotte has only released a handful of singles here and there, despite the “constant pressure” she feels as a small artist to churn out music. Dirckze expresses how she didn’t want to share anything that didn’t feel authentic or what “I deemed as good enough”. “Chaos is a perfect example of this, I simply took my time and put all my effort into this until it was perfect, and I’m not ashamed of it”. With a strong team around Charlotte including Jeremy and Jarod Tang (vocal production, mixing/mastering) and her co-producer Keenan Dirckze, she expressed how she has always felt comfortable messing things up or not getting it exactly right to find her sound. But when a song like ‘Strawberries’ comes around, “I don’t have the pressure to make it perfect, it feels like its meant to be”.

The TikTok-obsessed girly has started to tease her upcoming single ‘Strawberries’ out on April 28th. As someone who values authenticity, Charlotte shares how she’s always an “open book” but when she came across a certain “someone (she) grew really strong feelings for” she blames her inner Capricorn for “being slow” at processing strong feelings, especially ones she’s never felt before. “Pushing away the inevitable” wasn’t an option for Dirckze as she churned out the song “start to finish within an hour”. The song is rather “divinely guided”, “which brought this song to life” she reflects.

‘Strawberries’ has a rather interesting visual story that I was asked to be a part of with Creative Director and Stylist Elleni Yates. “I met Elleni on the shoot for ‘Chaos’ and I could trust her to take in my sporadic verbal bursts of ideas and execute them into a visual story” she laughs “usually I tend to take over the creative direction aspect of my campaigns, but it was really enjoyable watching Elleni and (myself) bring this to life”. The collection of visual stories adopts the use of anomaly to accompany lyrics about being “naive and delusional when you are really into someone”. Charlotte’s favourite story to execute was inspired by Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ balcony scene being a strong influence in the words of ‘Strawberries’ too.

When I first met Charlie, we were both freshly 18, graduated out of high-school at a small photoshoot in Prahran without a clue in the world for what the next year had in store for us. The fact that we now work together as creative partners on each-others projects is one of the greatest honours as a friend and an artist - so everybody go stream ‘Strawberries’ on April 28 (pls).

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