I’ve loved Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s songwriting since I heard her song “Slot Machine” in 2022. Her album Dreamtina was an ode to young love and it was the kind of sweet poetry that completely embodied the feeling of being a girl. Her new album Moth Mouth is coated in deeper colors but with that same lens of authenticity that she brings to each song. We talked about writing music for the girls, exploring new sounds, and the importance of community.
Tell me about this new album. I'm very curious.
CRB: Well, I'm really excited about it. It's called Moth Mouth. I feel like I set off wanting-- we talked about Dreamtina, my last album, which I felt like-- I think I started almost kind of with a color palette. I'm very visual. So I saw Dreamtina as all pastels, and it was very dreamy with lots of pink. It was really, really girly. feel like my favorite music is written by women, and I feel like I can relate to music that's written by women. So I always kind of set out to write songs for girls, and it's because it's always about being a girl at the end of the day. So Dreamtina was like very girly, girly fun about dating, whatever, being in your early 20s. And this one, I was like, "I just want to do something different." So I thought they were darker, more evil, sexy, and bolder colors like reds and greens, and just kind of darker.
I went through so many phases of what I wanted to call it, but I landed on Moth Mouth because my dad had this moth. My dad's a weird guy who lives on an abandoned dairy farm in Martha's Vineyard, and he loves his garden and stuff. If he finds a weird bug, he's always putting it in a mason jar and looking at it. So he got this moth, and I learned that moths don't have mouths. They are caterpillars, and they eat, eat, eat, eat, eat for about 10 months, and then they go into their cocoon. It's so crazy. They go in their cocoon, and then when they're a moth, they grow their wings and start flying around, but they don't have mouths. They only live for like 72 hours, and they have to mate within those 72 hours, and then they just die.
What? That's crazy.
CRB: Something about the album is about feeling mouthless in a way or feeling scared to express. I felt like I wrote a lot of it when I was going through a lot of feelings. I felt like I couldn't be totally honest or express my feelings or was kind of trapped in situations where I felt powerless. There are so many things about moths. They're nocturnal. They're drawn to the light, but they're always kind of outsiders, like always kind of trying to get into a warm-lit building. I just thought it was-- if the album was a character, I think it would be a moth.
I feel like moths are really misunderstood.
CRB: Yeah. And just kind of overshadowed by butterflies.
Well, can you tell me more about the change from Dreamtina, the sonic change?
CRB: Dreamtina, we'd kind of just found our sound and figured out a way to work together. That was really fun. So it was so exciting to get in the studio. It's just all guitar music. There's not a ton of overdubbing or anything crazy. It's straight up. It's exactly how you'd hear us play at the shows, which I really, really like. But this one-- I was just listening to different stuff that wasn't straight-up indie rock, a four-piece band. I was listening to a lot of Jockstrap, Caroline Polachek, and Lana Del Rey.
So we worked really closely on this album, just doing more stuff like that with synths and with auto-tune. I have one where there's intentional auto-tune on the vocals. I was worried about when I was making it because I was like, "Is it going to feel cohesive?" It tells a story chronologically, almost from beginning to end. And I love how much it dips and dives. And there's so much range in it, even though it's only eight songs.
Tell me how you kind of create a team of people around you. I feel like you have really good collaborators and people you work with. What's something that you look for in the people that you work with?
CRB: I think I work with people that I love so much, but it's just been the same band the whole time. It took me a long time initially to find people that I meshed with. I grew up with musicians. I have always known lots of musicians, but it's hard to find people that you have an easy shorthand with and just people who understand your taste. It takes a really long time, especially as an artist, to articulate what you want from a band and from a producer. That was something that I really struggled with early on, so being set up in rooms with strangers and kind of dating around, in a way, different producers. It was always really hard for me because I didn't know how to tell them what I wanted. Then, when I met my band, it was just easy because I didn't have to say anything. I feel like we can tell each other what we're feeling or what we want. We're not afraid of trying new stuff.
I feel like I work with a lot of younger women musicians, too, and they feel like always their ideas are just being not taken seriously.
CRB: I know. I mean, so much of my early career, before I made my first album, was people putting me in the studio with first songwriting sessions, which is crazy because I don't even-- I was like, "I just like writing my own songs. I don't need someone to help me." It was always me and an older guy who was looking at me, trying to write from the perspective of a young girl and trying to say what they thought I would say. This is something that I see over and over again: an older, more successful man in music thinks that they can do what Chappell Roan can do. It's like, "No, she has something special because she's writing about her experience, and that's why people connect with her." It's the one thing that we have. And the one thing that girls who are fans of music have. It's just this one really powerful connection that I don't think can be simulated by someone just trying to do it formulaically.
It's so funny because I feel like you can always tell when it's like, "Who wrote this?"
CRB: Just let the girls write songs. Girls are so good at writing songs.
It's funny because I get a lot of people who would be like, "Oh, do you even listen to men's music?" And I'm like, "Not really." But it's because I like to listen to things that I can relate to. Frankly, a lot of men's music, I don't relate to. And I think listeners like seeing themselves in music. So it's not even me being mean about it. I just prefer music that I can see myself in.
CRB: Totally. I couldn't agree more. That was so well said.
What keeps you motivated?
CRB: It feels especially difficult right now. I feel really lucky that I think if it was just me kind of in isolated posting online, I probably would have given up a long time ago because it's so disillusioning, especially in my fyp. Everything is just like I feel like I see 5,000 different versions of myself, and everyone is making a little sped-up video with lyrics like, "Stop scrolling. You've just found your new favorite, Gracie Abrams--". It's so crazy to see because I don't think that it's normal for us to see how many people are trying to do exactly the same thing we're doing. It's really scary. And so many people are so talented too. It feels really hard to compete and keep up with having enough content to push all the time.
No, it's all good. I agree.
CRB: I feel so lucky that I have real stuff in my life. And I really try to keep things that are really close to me. There's such a good community of my friends in New York who are also musicians. We go to each other's shows. I just feel really grateful that if my life doesn't change much more than this from music, I'll never feel like a failure because it brought me so many of my familial family love relationships in my life. And it just feels good. I think sometimes I feel so much admiration for my friends who are musicians in New York. And sometimes I think if I can get their approval and if they like the stuff that I'm doing and they ride for it and think it's cool, then that's all I can ask for because that's really-- yeah, that's all I can ask for.
I think that's the healthiest perspective to have. I feel like so many people lose sight of having an actual community, and I think it's hard to find. But I think a lot of people are so fixated on their social media that they forget that they have a real-life community too.
CRB: Totally. And I mean, I totally understand it because I think it took me a really long time to find it. I think I was floating around for a long time the first few years that I lived in New York. And now it's just so clear to me that no matter what success music brings me, the community is the most important thing. It would be cool if there was a world where being an artist doesn't equal trying to be famous or trying to be a celebrity. And you have your circle. It's easy to find your audience. And then that can just be it. And this whole thing of trying to have this success based on statistics can slowly disappear.
I guess my last thing would be, what's your best advice for young women in music? Updated version.
CRB: Okay. Two things. One is like don't wait for someone to give you permission to do something. I feel like I waited a long time for someone to be like, "Oh, well, don't release anything unless you have a record deal." Or don't do this yet unless you're working with some kind of producer who has an impressive thing or whatever. And that's just so silly because you're just going to waste your whole life waiting for someone. I think it's just like putting stuff out all the time. Also, don't feel intimidated by an industry guy telling you the way things are supposed to be. That's just like never true. And everything is changing so fast that no one knows what the fuck is going on. So you might as well just like I don't know. Same thing I've been saying this whole energy. Just make stuff that you're happy with and just put it out.
Emily Treadgold
