Details magazine, May 2002
[Contents page:]
Who is Charlotte Martin?
She's the piano-playing former Miss Illinois Teen USA with Bach's chops,
Britney's beauty, and a huge soft spot for all things goth.
By Barton Blasengame
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in the works: piano prodigy
Who Is Charlotte Martin?
by Barton Blasengame
Photo by Bharat Sikka
Hair and makeup: Robert Steinken for The Celestine Agency
She's the 25-year-old singer and ivory tickler whose upcoming debut
album One Girl Army, updates Tori Amos's meticulously confessional,
scars-and-all mode of songwriting. Though Martin was crowned Miss
Illinois Teen USA in 1994, her considerable piano chops set her apart
from pop's reigning beauty queens. In fact, when her flack — who's
helped guide the career of Nirvana and the Strokes — mailed review
copies of One Girl Army to the media, he intentionally left out any
photos of his extremely camera-ready client. "There wasn't anything
high-minded about it," Martin explains. "It's just that I'm not so
precious about my looks. I would like to point out, however," she says,
giggling, "that this is all my real hair."
She's a former opera major from Eastern Illinois University who changed
keys after a close friend committed suicide. "I wrote my first song for
her funeral," she recalls. "I think life just decided, 'Okay, I'm gonna
kick the shit out of you so you have something to say.'" A short time
later, she ditched Illinois for Los Angeles, and landed a recording
deal.
She's a skilled lyricist who writes with surgical precision about
everything from broken hymens to lovelorn stalkers. But her most
galvanizing songs tackle anorexia, a subject she knows firsthand,
having beaten the disorder herself eight years ago. (on "Something Like
A Hero," she sings "I close my eyes/ In the role of a stupid girl and
her stupid dress size.") The disease is "the most horrible, pathetic,
selfish thing in the word," she says. "If you have it, everything else
in your life — friends and family — comes second. I'll be writing
about it for years."
She's a "closet goth chick" who says she just hasn't gotten around to
dyeing her hair yet. "I had this whole awakening in college," she
explains. "I was really square, from a small town, and I met a girl
named Raven, who, as you can tell by the name, was a Goth. I moved in
with her and she turned me to the dark side." This explains Martin's
Morticia-meets-Martha Stewart interior decorating sensibility: She uses
black electrical tape to cover her walls with pictures of her heroes,
like the Cure's Robert Smith. "I love that man!" she squeals.
"Disintegration? Oh my God, that's only the best album ever."
She's a seductive live performer who writhes and shimmies on her piano
stool in her quest to "take the audience to another planet," as she
puts it. Producer Tom Rothrock (Beck, Foo Fighters) drew on this cosmic
energy by culling the majority of One Girl Army from studio jam
sessions. She may be thinking of Neptune when she plays extended gigs
and clubs in New York and Los Angeles later this year, bit she'll still
be making frequent calls to her parents — both former musicians —
back in Illinois. "The think it's rad that I'm making music," Martin
says. "But they still keep a room ready if I have to retreat back home
— just in case, you know."