Charli Adams

“Former cheer captain” isn’t something you always see on the resume of a rising, alternative singer-songwriter. For Charli Adams, who grew up across several small towns in rural Alabama, an outward display of optimism might have been the only way to get by. Charli Adams was born in a dollar-store town in northern Alabama, the kind of place you might hear Kacey Musgraves sing about. “I didn’t grow up in a musical family, but when I wrote my first song it clicked for me,” she says. “I could be melodramatic about my life in a way I hadn’t in any other form of expression. When I wrote music, I felt like I could say it all. Songwriting is essentially my only outlet to be unfiltered.” Feeling desperately constrained, Adams left high school at 16 and started making trips to Nashville where she found herself in the alternative music scene. By 17 she was living on her own in Nashville. In between a serving job and finishing high school online, she would drive the back roads of Tennessee listening to albums from The Cure to The 1975 and seeing every possible underground show Nashville had to offer. These formative years were captured on her debut EP, Good At Being Young. In 2021, Adams released her critically acclaimed debut album Bullseye which featured collaborations with Novo Amor, Ruston Kelly and Nightly. Throughout her career, she has written for the likes of peach pit, Chloe Moriondo, and Valley. Up next, she’s working on her new EP (expected mid-2023).