Emo pop artist Charlotte Sands goes to summer school at The Granada this Friday

Photo Courtesy of Charlotte Sands

After the success of last year’s Summer School Tour, we’re getting a second installment. The tour, founded by Eric Tobin of Hopeless Records, KMGMT’s Michael Kaminsky, and Warped Tour impresario Kevin Lyman, brought the vibe of a miniature festival to venues across the country, pairing up-and-coming artists with established acts. Any of the headliners could readily sell out a club on their own, but three of them, along with three other buzzy bands, was a recipe for success and this sophomore incarnation looks to be no different.

The seven acts for this year’s Summer School session are Taylor Acorn, Charlotte Sands, Rain City Drive, If Not For Me, Beauty School Dropout, Arrows in Action, and Huddy, with the tour rolling through The Granada this Friday, July 18, having been moved from The Uptown.

We spoke with Charlotte Sands, whose mix of dance pop and emo create a rapturous blend. Her 2022 debut, Love and Other Lies, leaned a little more into pop-punk vibes, to say nothing of collaborations with a veritable who’s-who of emo royalty like The Maine and Taking Back Sunday, but last year’s can we start over? heralded a move toward blending those early 2000s sounds with more modern dance and pop. It’s the natural evolution in a world where Billy Eilish performs with Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Olivia Rodrigo covers “Complicated’ with Avril Lavigne.

Charlotte Sands’ latest single, “Hush”, is a banger, and we were excited to chat all things music with her, including Sands’ own cover of AFI’s “Miss Murder”.

The Pitch: “Hush” seems to find you going further in the direction you were headed on can we start over?, where it feels like this is very much like dance music for people who want to get in their feelings.

Charlotte Sands: Exactly. It’s been so fun. I’m so grateful to live in an era that genre is kind of becoming less and less relevant. It’s almost just people commit and want to know the artist and then, as long as there’s like the same thread of quality and care throughout the music, I feel like people are okay with just expanding and expressing yourself in different ways, which has been so fun for me because it really is all of my personalities.

It’s like the person who wants to be at the DJ set at a festival and then also be in the pit for Bring Me the Horizon. It’s just trying to combine all of those feelings and all those experiences.

What’s great about your career is that you are an independent solo artist, but you’ve gotten to feature with all of these artists who are formative for certain folks. What’s it like to get to perform on a song by Taking Back Sunday or similar tracks?

I was like, “Wow, that is actually really crazy.” I think it’s been the coolest part of my career. The biggest honor, truly, is the fact that I’ve been able to work with so many people that I really am such a fan of and have shaped my love for music and my career.

I love featuring on stuff. I love being able to just bop around the world and get up on stage for three minutes as the coolest job ever. You just sing for three minutes and then you’re like, “Okay, now I can hang out.” I just feel so lucky that that’s my experience and especially with so many incredible people.

The Maine were a band that was so influential to me, and I was listening all through middle school and high school. They were just such a massive part of me wanting to make music, and the fact that they are also just such incredible people. Everyone’s always like, “Don’t meet your idols,” but if you know The Maine, that’s the one exception of “absolutely meet your idols.”

They’re more incredible than you could ever imagine, being able to jump up and sing “Loved You a Little” with them all over the world. We’ve done it in London. We’ve done it in so many places. It’s just been the greatest experience ever and I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to do that with multiple bands that I love.

Image Courtesy of Summer School Tour

I was trying to explain what you sounded like to people and I just kept pointing them to your cover of “Miss Murder”. How was it like covering one of AFI’s iconic singles? Is there a challenge or terrified nervousness?

Oh, it was terrifying. Reimagining a song that, first of all, doesn’t really need to be reimagined is already so scary because in the rock fan bases, most people don’t really want you to touch things that are awesome and that have already been legendary songs.

There’s also an added element of being a woman in this scene makes it where lot of people have even more of an issue with it because they see me and they have see the blue hair and they hear some of my other music that’s more pop leaning and they’re like, “She’s making this version more pop!” and “She’s taking away the grit and the edge!” and all these things.

Honestly, it’s one of those things where it was a really intimidating process of trying to make something my own while also keeping all the parts that make it so incredible and this song that so many people love. But, there’s a certain level that you just have to fully commit and be like, “Who cares?”

This is fun, this is what music is, and all you can do is do your best, have a good time, and hope that people understand that you also love and respect this music and you’re just trying to enjoy it in your own way. There’s so many people throughout so many generations of music that I feel sample older songs and remake it.

I think that is such a cool category of music and I love hearing my favorite artists’ renditions of certain songs. I just think it’s so cool to bring that music back and relive it and re-celebrate it in a different way.

I like the fact that you do mentioned gender in the scene because one of the appeals, I think, for the Summer School Tour is that it is not a bunch of dudes in athletic shorts and jerseys on stage. It is a very diverse lineup. Is that what attracted you to performing on this year’s sophomore incarnation?

Yeah, absolutely. I think, honestly, a huge part of it for me was how badly the Summer School team wanted to really emphasize women in the scene and how excited they were about having that type of lineup. Anytime that there’s that type of energy—that’s like, “Our priority is to really emphasize artists that, in general, we love, that we think should be getting more attention, or that we want to help build their fan bases,” while also keeping it a really wonderful experience for fans, keeping it affordable, and all these elements that I think are so often overlooked. I immediately was like, “Yeah, I wanna be a part of this.”

It just makes everyone involved have such a wonderful time. It’s really interesting, because if you look at the lineups of most rock-leaning festivals or tours, it’s very rare to see multiple women on the bill, especially as headliners. I’m just so honored and so excited to get to do that alongside Taylor [Acorn], who I absolutely adore and could go on and on about. But yeah, it’s a really exciting experience and the whole thing is just gonna be wonderful.

You and Taylor put out that single, “Final Nail”. What’s it like being able to share the stage and tour with them for most of the summer?

I think a big part of my excitement is the fact that I’ve been off the road for almost a year now, which is very rare for me. I feel like I’m usually touring like eight months out of the year so a big part of my excitement is just the fact that I get to be back in my element.

I love Taylor so much and she is truly one of my good friends. I think we are so similar in our lives and in our careers of what’s important to us, how we protect our energy. The way we go about our careers and our touring careers are very similar. It’s exciting for that reason alone, just because I know that touring with somebody that’s at a similar level as you, and especially as a woman, it just feels like this companionship that I think is really rare a lot of the times in the industry.

If you’re usually the headliner, then there’s openers and there’s an isolation at every stage, but this is the first time that I’ve really done something that it’s three headliners and I think that immediately builds a community of people that are just around each other all the time. We’re all going through similar experiences and same thing as the openers. It’s like a summer camp that we’re all just getting to be in this experience together and in this echo chamber. It just feels like an absolute dream to get to be around so many wonderful people at all hours of the day.

“Hush” is the first of several single singles that you’re gonna be putting out this summer. What other sounds and vibes can folks expect as the months go on?

I’m really excited because it’s gonna be all over the map. Honestly, there’s a few songs that I know I’m gonna be putting out. I know what the next one is gonna be. I think that there’s a lot of similarities between “Hush” in the sense of high energy rock mixed with the electronic aspect. I just think that stuff is so fun, especially going into summer and going into this era.

Last year had brat summer, which was the best thing that ever happened to us. Going through that, I think you learn how badly a lot of people just need to have fun. A lot of times, as artists, we think, at least for me, I’ve always been like, “Oh, it needs to be really deep and it has to have depth and it needs to be this emotional experience so that people feel like I am validating their experiences.”

Then you put out songs like “Hush” and on my previous album, “Spite”, and these things that aren’t emotionally as deep, but people just relate to them so much because they just feel joyful and they are able to have these really fun experiences and escape their realities. Sometimes people don’t want to be reminded of the hardest parts of their life and they just want to be able to celebrate themselves and celebrate their lives.

I think that’s really a really important element as well, so I’m trying to remind myself of the importance of both sides of my artistry and I’m gonna be diving into both things and definitely have the songs that are more emotional and then definitely have the songs that just feel fun and that will hopefully help people just have a really enjoyable experience at a live show.

Charlotte Sands performs as part of the Summer School Tour, along with Taylor Acorn, Rain City Drive, If Not For Me, Beauty School Dropout, Arrows in Action, and Huddy, which hits The Granada this Friday, July 18. Details on that show here.