Charlie Cunningham has emerged as a truly under-the-radar success story. He has headlined London’s iconic Queen Elizabeth Hall and has become a regular fixture in Europe’s most prestigious concert halls. Splitting his time between piano and nylon string guitar, Charlie creates melancholic yet rhythmically driven songs. When expressed with his warm voice and characteristic restraint, something timeless takes shape.
Despite his dyslexia making it near impossible for him to read music, Charlie earned a music degree and by his mid-20s worked a variety of odd jobs and wrote songs in his free time. Eventually, he moved to Seville, immersed himself in Flamenco music, and focussed intensely on his guitar playing. Planning to stay for 3 months, he stayed for 3 years. Once home, Charlie found work playing in bars across London and Oxford — eventually returning to songwriting. Charlie has subsequently released 2 albums and 4 eps which have garnered over half a billion streams.
Next on the horizon is his third album, Frame. A collection of lush, delicate pop songs brimming with references to art rock, golden era jazz, and neo-classical composition—all the while maintaining the pared-back and clear-eyed musicality for which he is so well recognized. Throughout the album, Charlie and long-time producer, Sam Hudson Scott, create the fragility, power, and tension found in timeless songwriting, reanimated through a modern lens.
An artist made more articulate and introspective by the global adversity under which it was written, Charlie weaves a delicate autobiographical thread through the record. This thread sews together universal and individual concerns—binding the personal to the political and connecting themes of heartbreak, spirituality, grief, and climate anxiety. ‘We are the sum of the competing aspects of our personalities—these songs are conversations between mine. Learning to accept, or even embrace the conflicting parts of ourselves is a matter of self-preservation.
