(andPOP) - Whichever one of Charlotte Sometimes' personalities I just talked to, I like her.
The adorable new Geffen artist's real name is Jessica Charlotte Poland. "Charlotte Sometimes" is the name of her favourite children's book, in which a young girl at boarding school travels back and forth in time, being herself in 1963 and changing into a girl named Clare in 1918.
That kind of duality is clearly something that our 20-year-old Charlotte identifies with.
"I think that Charlotte is a crazy performer, who is seductive and vindictive," she told andPOP of her onstage persona. In real life, she's a New Jersey home girl into 50's-style fashion - with the occasional penchant for chaos and self-absorption.
Her sound is equally two-faced. Charlotte's dark lyrics slink around inside dance-pop music. She wrote most of the album while going through a bad break up. Her new single is entitled "How I Could Just Kill A Man," so that should give you an idea of just
how bad it was.
Writing the single was actually a spontaneous effort after her manager told her to channel her emotions into writing her own version of the Cypress Hill song of the same name.
"They knew they wanted it as a single before I even wrote it," she said. "They were like, 'We need a hit!' So I went into the other room and wrote it, and on accident it was what they wanted.
"It was true to my heart, it expressed what I was going through at the time. So it was a great therapeutic exercise."
Charlotte just made her first video for the song, which she said was a great experience despite the 11-hour days. "The video is really hilarious," she said excitedly. "I kill this guy like four times in various ways. You're going to love it!"
Don't feel bad for the dude who was the inspiration for all this musical therapy, though, because it sounds like the animosity is pretty evenly distributed. If the ex wrote a song about her, Charlotte imagines it would be called, "'Dream Killer. That sounds about right!" she said with a laugh.
But will she ever get sick of singing about her ex every night? "I'm over him, but I don't think you ever get over a feeling. Those feelings will always be with me. And anyway, relationships are really cyclical. It's always like, 'Oh I really like this guy, I hate this guy, I really like this guy, I hate this guy.'"
Good thing there are some men she can count on. Charlotte credits her band with helping her get through any rough patches.
"I definitely could easily like and be like, 'Oh my gosh, everything's totally great, I'm totally happy.' But that would be a big fat lie. It's a challenge meeting all these demands, there's always someone there waiting to make money off of you. But I'm able to do it because I have a really great family of boys in my band who let me freak out and cry and cuddle me.
"And when you're in front of a group full of kids making them dance, it's worth it."
Her audience isn't the only one moving their feet. Charlotte herself studied dance for 13 years, so though she doesn't have choreographed routines, she moves to her music the way she feels it.
"People don't realize I can shake my booty! Maybe I'm not as good as Shakira, but I can definitely rock out. I have a little dance party on stage."
The kind of music that inspires her to dance and sing is everything from Fiona Apple and Rilo Kiley to Van Morrison and Billie Holiday. She's such a die-hard music fan that she even has the name of a Postal Service song tattooed on her left wrist. But her dark secret is that she's a fan of Hanson.
"My band thinks I'm a loser for it!" she said, "but they seem like very nice boys. I doubt it would ever happen, but I would love to perform with them."
The boys would have plenty of opportunities, as Charlotte will be taking off with Vans Warped Tour in June, playing almost every day for two months. Everywhere she goes, Charlotte brings with her a pro-women message.
"I feel like it's really hard for girls," she said of the music industry. It's a boys club. Some girls even want it to be that way. There's all this prejudice against women artists."
Charlotte refuses to let people define female music as a genre. "The other day I invited myself to Wal-Mart with these young girls, and all the music they listened to had guy singers. And when I asked them why they thought that was, they couldn't come up with a concrete answer other than, 'they all sound the same.' But the boy bands they listen to all sound the same! Even their chords are interchangeable. I try to educate everybody, and make them think, 'Why is that? Is it because of our society?' I'm not going to give up."
For someone who claims to be "not that smart," it seems to me that Charlotte is definitely very bright.
To hear a sample of her album, "Waves & The Both of Us," before it drops on May 6,
check out her MySpace page by clicking on these words.
