It’s been nearly a decade since Charlotte Cardin made it to the La Voix finals. The world seemed eager to hear more of the then-18-year-old’s music, but she wasn’t quite ready to commit. Following a stint as a professional model, Cardin started blowing up in 2016 with her sexy, smoky and addictive jazzy R&B sound and debut EP Big Boy, followed by 2017’s Main Girl EP. Two years in the making, the Montreal singer-songwriter’s 2021 love-stained debut album Phoenix is a collection of nuanced alt-pop that ooze sadgirl swagger. Guided by instinct and gifted with a seismic voice, her unfiltered personal anthems about life, love and human connection are soulful and evocative. Cardin sings about the hell she's been through and wanting to be reborn, like the mythological bird the album is named after, plus a desire to be liberated and grapple with two versions of herself, represented on the album's cover. From lust and love to wreckage and heartache, Cardin confidently and unremorsefully confronts her emotions in songs about the fear of wasting time in your twenties, a friend-with-benefits relationship gone stale and granting control to dispossessed women, all sung with a pinch of cheekiness.
Biography by Kerry Clarke