Carlie Hanson is an alt-pop artist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist collecting one creative milestone after another. First breaking through at 17 years old and touring with major artists like Yungblud, Troye Sivan, and more since then, Carlie is carving an unforgettable path as a young musician. Her recent EP too late to cry, released on February 7th, was written and largely self-produced — a skill she literally picked up on her own through video tutorials. Through these seven captivating tracks, she channels the importance of shedding skin and stepping into new, more authentic narratives.
Congratulations on your new EP! It’s an incredibly sincere and dreamy record. Were there any particular messages or themes that you were trying to encapsulate through the music?
Carlie: “One, I was experimenting production-wise. I feel like a lot of my songs in the past were very pop-produced, which was amazing and what I wanted at the time, but because I was coming into producing on my own, I always go toward a more stripped-back version of myself. I tend to make more mellow music when I’m working by myself, which is interesting, so I think that’s what a lot of this EP turned out to be. A lot of them started with just me, and that’s what I was leaning towards. For themes, lyrics, and what I was going through, I had just been dropped from my first record deal. A lot of artists were going through that during COVID. I was in the headspace of, ‘I’m going to prove them wrong and I’m going to do this by myself.’ That energy is where the song ‘covering faces’ came from. As for ‘too late to cry,’ it’s about getting your head out of the funk and pushing yourself to get better at creating independently.”
What was the inspiration behind the EP title too late to cry?
Carlie: “I think ‘too late to cry’ was such a weird song with how it was written. I started in my bedroom and wrote these verses that were just me venting, asking ‘why weren’t you there?’ to people that I thought were going to be there for me. Then, I didn’t really know where to take the chorus, so I didn’t even have the lyric ‘too late to cry’ written yet. I took it to my friend Slush Puppy and he kind of just mumbled these words, and he was like, ‘I think it should be a really simple phrase in the chorus,’ and that’s when we got to ‘too late to cry.’ It’s weird how music works because that kind of just came out of the blue. It’s like magic sometimes because I really didn’t intend for it, and that’s the song that wraps the whole EP together.”
If any, which song on the EP do you feel the most connected to and why?
Carlie: “At first when the project came out, I loved ‘how many hours.’ But I think I always go back to ‘sinking’ being my favorite. I like the story behind it. As much as I was trying to be headstrong and confident about moving forward and not dwelling on what I was going through at the time, I’m a very emotional person at the end of the day. I tend to be very hard on myself. The production of ‘sinking’ gives me that nostalgic feeling I always search for in other music.”
Looking back on your musical journey so far, how has the songwriting and production process evolved?
Carlie: “It has changed a lot — it used to be more structured. When I was first starting out professionally writing music and going to LA for sessions, I was put into rooms with amazing songwriters, so I was kind of just following their lead on how to write because I was 17. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just liked singing. I didn’t know what a hook or a bridge was. We’d start with chords, then we’d riff melodies, write the chorus, and we’d kind of work from there. Sometimes that still works for me, but now I’m at a place where people who write music would probably think I’m insane sometimes. If I’m by myself, I’d probably still start with guitar, and then maybe I’ll record one lyric without knowing whether it’ll be a hook, a verse... then, I’ll kind of skip the writing and go straight into building the production. It’s so very strange and erratic now, but I think I’ve just gotten more comfortable.”
Early on in your career or even before it, were there any musical influences that shaped your sound the most?
Carlie: “The reason that I started singing was Justin Bieber. I was probably like nine when I first heard ‘One Time’ on the radio. I remember turning to my older sister and being like, ‘Is this a girl singing? Who is this? I need to go home and listen to this.’ So I got on my computer, obviously found out he wasn’t a girl... I immediately fell in love and went back to his original YouTube videos where he was doing covers. From that day forward, I was just immersed and wanted to replicate everything he was doing. I was singing the same covers. I was probably trying to dress the same as him. I just became obsessed. To this day, at least in my opinion, I have a similar style with how he does runs and uses a lot of his range. But as I grew up, I fell into a different genre of Lil Peep and the SoundCloud era, and I feel like now I have a little bit of all that.”
