The artist known as Clairo has always been skeptical of charm. In her first single, 2017’s viral “Pretty Girl”, which Claire Cotrill uploaded to YouTube as a Syracuse University student, she says, “I’ll be your pretty girl, shut up when you want me to.” This song suggests seemingly innocent interactions can be coupled with expectations from one side.
On her third album, Charm, Clairo reclaims the concept of attraction, framing it as a human need and innate peril. In “Pier 4”, she asks, “What’s the cost of it, of being loved?” Using a fleeting moment of attraction as its organizing concept, Charm surveys the damage love affairs, both long-lasting and short-lived, can inflict.
Clairo’s method of communication has always been subtle. Her debut album, 2019’s Immunity, flirted with pop, its electronic production adding weight to quietly catchy melodies. On 2021’s Sling, acoustics complement Clairo’s light vocals and develop the messages of her songs through guitar flourishes and piano interludes. Instrumentation also underscores Clairo’s perspective as someone unlikely to be in her position.
While existing adjacent to pop, Clairo’s demure aura implies a desire for a quiet life. After Max Martin-produced synthpop dominated the 2010s, sung by stars who embraced cartoonish personas, Clairo’s reluctance to embrace stardom fulfills the market’s desire for minimalism.
In the Sling track “Management”, Clairo addresses her place in the music industry: “I’m doing it for my future self / The one who needs more attention.” Sling reestablished Clairo as someone making earnest music from a place of isolation. Immediate pop success, which recreating Immunity might have caused, would have undermined her core intimacy.
Charm builds on this progress with 1970s-inspired acoustics. Most of the instrumentation was recorded with a live session band, which gives it a spontaneous, lived-in feel, like a jam session among friends. This dressing-down contrasts the acoustics of Sling, which felt pointed and controlled. For Sling, Clairo enlisted in-demand producer Jack Antonoff. While his versatility ensures the album doesn’t sound like pop, its meandering writing allows the acoustics to take center stage.
Conversely, on Charm, the musical backing is looser and the songwriting tighter. “Nomad” and “Add Up My Love” have upbeat choruses, hopeful sentiments, and familiar structures hinting that Clairo may be taking a round-about route to full-blown pop.
In “Sexy to Someone”, Clairo’s unique melodic cadence conveys a familiar sentiment in an off-center way. The song embodies Clairo’s intrigue: she strives to express something universal from a place of purposeful isolation. Her voice begs the question, is she there at all?
In “Sexy”, Clairo portrays awkward social interactions as endearing by gliding through their retelling with smooth vocals, mellow piano, and soft drums. Of a conversation with a stranger at a bar, she says, “Ask if I’m in a movie, no I didn’t get the part.” The cheerful flutes following this line convey indifference, while the lyrics convey longing, a combination underscoring Clairo’s existence between the allure of the spotlight and her hesitation towards it.
The growth of the media-industrial complex due to the existence of the internet warrants that singers personally interact with the economic ecosystem that sells their music. Profiting from acknowledging your fame may seem like a cash grab, but, like Clairo’s initial acoustic pivot, it is an act of self-preservation. Speaking of her self-referential tendencies, Taylor Swift said to Rolling Stone, “…when you realize the rules of the game you’re playing, and how it will affect you, you got to look at the board and make your strategy.”
Success in the music business requires performing pre-emptive strikes on damaging media narratives. At the beginning of her career, Clairo faced “industry plant” allegations because a family friend, who co-founded FADER Label, helped secure her a record deal. Clairo’s contemplative turn on Sling, mirrored by her purchase of a house in upstate New York, struck down the next wave of bad press before it could come: that her “sad girl” schtick is a Trojan Horse for a traditional pop star. By turning away from pop, and chronicling the pitfalls of working in the music industry, Clairo gave herself the freedom to experiment with Charm.
The instrumental breaks throughout Charm convey Clairo’s control. Sparse lyrics on “Juna” and “Terrapin” allow for interludes with slow percussion, piano trills, and gentle “ooohs” underpinned by a Wurlitzer. The careful placement of instrumental breaks signifies her authority as a conductor, choosing when an intentional absence should speak for itself.
Clairo delivers Charm‘s confessions with a wink. The album’s title not only references its thematic throughline of romantic attraction but also its enticing delivery. Clairo’s introspective, unassuming persona has become a foundation on which she can flirt with upbeat sounds and hopeful themes that defy the expectations of having a “sad girl” persona.
However, this new approach doesn’t stop Clairo from giving Charm a sad ending. After exploring infatuation on “Second Nature,” reluctant partners on “Slow Dance,” and anticipation on “Add Up My Love”, she admits the downsides of pursuing love on “Pier 4″, providing closure to the storyline of the album’s opener “Nomad”.
Like Taylor Swift’s Red, Charm is a frame narrative. A frame narrative is a method of storytelling that begins at the end or middle of a story and zooms out to relay events. The 2024 film Challengers by Luca Guadanino is a frame narrative, as it begins by anticipating the tennis match that ends the film, while most of the run time catches viewers up on how the characters came into their present situation.
Similarly, Charm begins with Clairo accepting the demise of a relationship. In “Nomad”, she says, “I’d rather wake up alone than be reminded / Of how it was a dream this time.” The rest of the record tells the story of that dream.
“Pier 4” shatters the illusion when Clairo observes an ill-fated couple and discerns the unhappiness of one partner. She also admits her dissatisfaction: “And now I’m too tough / From close just being too much.” This line provides a definitive stance on the record’s investigation of temporarily thrilling moments that give way to lasting love or heartbreak.
The dramatic tension underlying Charm comes from the risk of meeting someone new, when the closeness required for the spark of attraction means an increased chance of being let down. However, the album’s up-tempo sound testifies to the idea that, even in negative experiences, there is something to be gained.
Clairo’s commitment to outsidership is the central premise of her catalog. “If touch could make them hear / Then touch me now,” she says on the Sling track “Blouse”. Her loyalty to this principle allows Charm to come across as attention-seeking without sacrificing her outsider status.
The bridge of “Second Nature” captures Clairo’s ability to juggle personalities. The tempo changes as she addresses her lover before speeding back up to a refrain of carefree “da-da-da dum”s. This noticeable shift contrasts Clairo’s breeziness, calling her own bluff: she’s not necessarily charming or shy, but a chameleon. Shape-shifting is necessary for any public figure when social media makes oversaturation a constant threat. You have to maintain the individuality of your appeal.
Speaking of the human longing to desire and feel desired, Clairo told Crack magazine, “I forgot it was part of my life…I swore it off.” She attributes this choice to her celebrity; she feels the only way to reclaim her sexuality is to shut others off from it. That’s the paradox of fame: life affects work, and work affects life. Yet, any celebrity who identifies this connection is accused of lacking artistic integrity. Just like art cannot transcend the vehicle of celebrity that communicates it to the world, charm, and attraction cannot transcend the need for storytelling that governs other aspects of being human.
Frame narratives are useful devices because they show humans’ emotional lives do not mirror the trajectory of lived experiences. Personal development is not necessarily linear. Facing the trials of life requires taking a leap of faith, romantically or otherwise. Charm is the knowledge of yourself packaged for someone else to consume.
Making an album requires picking sounds to reflect an artist’s identity; it is already an exercise in creating magnetism. Consequently, Charm is more than its autobiographical narrative of meeting someone new. Clairo leans into a cheerful persona, challenging the self-sustaining sadness that threatens to envelop artists known for delivering melancholy work. These artists place economic value on their suffering. The question is: how do you move to a positive emotional place without jeopardizing your career?
As an about-face in terms of persona, Charm goes out on a limb, like its narrator, who proclaims she needs a reason to get out of the house on “Sexy to Someone”. The record is the reason, bearing clear evidence of what came before. The juxtaposition between its straightforward title and the desolate mood of Clairo’s previous work comes across as humorous, a quirk with its own intrigue.
Clairo dares listeners to engage with a happier incarnation of herself while presenting observations that defy categorization: life is not necessarily happy or sad. The need for branding is a side effect of capitalism. By naming an album Charm, Clairo parodies and fulfills this requirement, mastering the music industry chess game while remaining on its periphery.
A moment of charm is a brief flicker. There is magic in closeness. Enlarging it destroys it, and making it a business threatens its ability to exist. However, Clairo seems poised to go where her charisma may take her. You don’t need to hypnotize the masses to achieve your dreams. Sometimes, it is as simple as getting one person to understand the essence of your appeal. When that happens, a spell is cast; two people understand something without words as if sharing the same dream. When you wake up, at least you have a good story.