Charley Is The Queer Pop Star Australia Needs

ARIA-nominated artist Claire Howell, known as Charley, has just released her debut album, The Chronicles of a Serial Idealist. It's a journey through her experiences over the last three years, including some raw and vulnerable moments — so much so, that during the first listening party, most of the room was tearing up. It's not just that she's tapped into her darkest moments, but that she's shown up authentically and as herself: a young, queer woman trying to figure out life. In Boys Scare Me, she chronicles the story of how terrifying it can be to try to date a man after being used to dating women, with a catchy repetitive chorus reminiscent of Hilary Duff's Roommates or Katy Perry's Never Really Over.

For her newest music video, Other Side Of The Room, Charley put a twist on classic vintage film tropes (think cowboy aesthetic, vintage pin-up and film noir), turning them into queer romance. "It's important to be yourself and growing up, I didn't really see a lot of that," Charley tells Refinery29 Australia. "It's nice hearing a lot of younger queer fans say that I was a part of their coming out and realising their queerness or who they were, and accepting themselves. So yeah, it is really important." For the video, she wanted to inject queerness into mainstream styles she loves. "It's showing what an invisible string is with a human. When you go through a breakup, and it's like, no matter where you are, no matter what life you're in or universe, they'll always be attached to you, and they'll always just be there."

The artist's underlying message throughout the album is that sometimes you can have "toxic positivity", where you take it a little too far. If there's one thing she wants fans to know, it's that not everybody is inherently good. "Sometimes being a serial idealist is not the best, and you can't glorify bad people, and you need to know when enough is enough," Charley says. "You sometimes have to go through the things to figure out who you are, but at the end of everything, we're all gonna die."

For a debut album, it's surprisingly cohesive. The music videos, visualisers and images all work together in a style that's distinctly Charley. The star admits she had some help from Pinterest, which makes total sense. "Whenever I have either a song or anything to do with it, I always [try to] create a world around it," the artist says. "You [need to try] and have that branding, I guess, for literally everything, even for like my album artwork." For her, the storybook idea developed from pinning some library visuals before delving deeper into a world of fairy tales.

The pop star has had a long career, starting with two appearances on The Voice in 2016 and 2017 before being signed to EMI Music Australia in 2020. For her, authenticity is the key. While Charley feels pressure — not from her team or label, but from herself — to tick all the boxes when it comes to a hit, or other measures of success, the artist also knows that's not what matters most. "Generally, you can tell when someone's not being authentic. I feel like I've tried to be authentic all the way... all that matters with creativity is what you love and what is authentic to you."

This doesn't mean she can't dabble in new genres, change up her sound, appearance or even take on a new persona. In fact, she loves artists like Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga who have a strong separation between their onstage persona and their regular life. Instead, she believes success comes from doing what makes you happy, rather than putting out art you believe other people want or to become famous.

Hollywood and the music industry typically have put an expiration on women when it comes to their careers, but this is slowly changing. The 28-year-old has been in the public eye since she was 18, but she isn't fussed by the idea of ageing. "Back in the day, people would be like, 'Oh, you're actually past 22, so you're not going to make it'," Charley says. "But you see all these artists like Chappell Roan and... Zara Larsson, they've been making music since they were so young, and then now just like really f**king doing it.

"Once you get over 30, it really just shows you that [you have] grown into yourself, you've learned yourself more and you have all this music behind you, so that when you do make it, then you're like, okay. Let's go." Charley's plan is to keep creating and performing music for as long as it makes her happy, and age isn't a factor. Hopefully this means fans can count on many more albums in the future.