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Week 6 of the Making of Unnamed Album - May (Songs finished: 1)

Charlee Remitz • July 20, 2026

Last you heard, on the fourteenth and final song of the album, I hit a wall after days in the studio, listening to my voice break in all the same places, no matter the warmups, the cups of tea with honey, the brief recesses to the dining room, which had become an explosion of culinary supplies while Lawrence and his wife painted their kitchen two shades of pink. We would all struggle in our lifetimes to recognize a genuine wall. One that cannot be moved through, around, or over. And that was one such moment for me.


So, I flew home, and two busy months passed during which I went viral twice, hit 50,000 followers on Instagram, celebrated my five-year anniversary in Nova Scotia, visited 24 Canadian lighthouses, saw every lighthouse on Staten Island and every lighthouse in South Carolina, stayed in my first lighthouse on Daufuskie Island, hit my 500th U.S. lighthouse in Massachusetts, and celebrated my 31st birthday on Martha’s Vineyard.


And then, I was back in Richmond one final time, out on a farewell tour of sorts. I began all my visits to this glorious city the same: at Stella’s. Stella’s had become its own little village by this time. In August of last year, it was a mediterranean restaurant with a to-go-style grocer/wine

shop across the street. Out front, there were three vintage fiats and bistro sets. Now, there was Stella’s boutique next door and a new, Blade Runner-style tavern across the way. I liked knowing things were changing and seeing how. The city had become mine, in a way.


I sat at the end of the bar and conversed with my favorite bartender. I knew to inquire about his son born in October. A libra with a long face and large eyes. He asked me how long my trip was this time around. I told him, sadly, only a few days. I ordered blueberry cocktails and listened as the women next to me tore their way through subjects, friends, and espresso martinis until neither of them had awareness enough to gauge their noise.

I’d timed my visit with Arts in the Park. But I never made it there. The interesting thing about going viral is the preoccupation you then have with going viral again. My first day in Richmond, after working out, I went to Minglewood Bakery to get a blueberry lemon scone. The first time I’d gotten this scone, I’d been underwhelmed. I’m not sure if the scone mixture had changed or if I had grown to like the underwhelm, but I had, in the many weeks I’d frequented Richmond, grown a rather large attachment to them.


So, I did my morning things, and then I was on my phone the entire afternoon. I was always on the lookout for a conversation to join. Of course, I’d prefer it was organic. But, as social media was no longer organic, and the algorithm went from chronological to arranged by order of engagement, I could no longer be organic. And, unfortunately, going viral is really the only way the algorithm will reward your content. Your followers go up and the algorithm feeds them all your new content before anyone else’s.


There was a stirring in the beauty sector when Simone Biles called out her glam squad after footing a $22,000 bill for an event. I joined in the  conversation, found myself beat up by makeup artists and stylists in the comment section, and revised my views. I told myself as I watched my platform grow, that I would not shy away from being wrong. But it was hard. My head buzzed reading the comments as people took the opportunity to disagree in a way that was constructive or in a way that might suggest I had become the placeholder for unrelated grief.


When I go back over these essays, I see a throughline: learning how to manage not simply being chronically online but chronically visible.


Of course, visibility is a privilege. But I maintain that most people misunderstand the stakes of broadcasting your face, your thoughts, and your opinions online for all the world to comment on with their private profiles and AI caricatures to insulate them from similar judgement. And I was not simply sharing my lighthouse journey, or the making of album six, I was commenting on politics in a time when President Trump was, in no quiet way, threatening to “neutralize” the opposition.


I had become my own worst bully, furious at the way I spent my time scrolling and creating like a captive. I recognize this as a form of addiction, and I often thought of this one creator who posted time-lapses of herself “raw-dogging an hour,” whereas she’d sit in a fold-out chair some beautiful somewhere with her arms crossed and her head looking this way and that. No phone. No TV. No book. Just presence.


Eventually, around three o’clock, I managed to pocket my phone so I could shop Carytown, visit the cat at Shelf Life, and finish the day at the Byrd Theater seeing Mission Impossible.

Some will recall the quiet, snowy night I first visited the Byrd in January. The southeastern freeze had torn through Nashville with a vengeance, decimating power lines and leaving hundreds of thousands without heat. Richmond got off easy. No crisis, just stillness. I was out walking the snowpack, helping strangers’ push their cars down side streets, when I ducked into the theater out of the freezing rain, hanging my coat over the seat beside me to dry. It was a perfect night.


And so, too, was this.


It could be the theater, or the novelty of this type of solo date. But going back to 1998, when Mission Impossible debuted in theaters, I felt I could step out of that screening into a world that only knew Trump as a nepo baby of some note in New York City. Where I was phone-free, enthralled by media of length, and unburdened by the need to chronicle anything at all.


The following day I was back in the studio, and I was relieved to find that my vocals, which cracked and broke around me back in February, were healed by time. Still, the song was a worthy opponent. It did not let me off easy. Four hours I spent on my feet that first afternoon, in a blue sweater from Le Ligne, with a worried Lawrence telling me to let him know when my vocals needed a break. We couldn’t afford for them to blow out too early on in the process.


When we sat down with fresh ears to give the song a listen after a brief download in his dining room (The shack-turned-studio was coming along nicely. The cats were still hungry and dire.), we were surprised to find a song much farther along than the one we’d thought we left. The vocals—what spare few I’d been able to get down—would, in no uncertain terms, need to be re-recorded. But we were, otherwise, in what both of us would call a “good place”.


Now, I just needed to be unshakeable. Sturdy. Now, I just needed to endure.

When the vocals were done, we drank IPAs while I sat at the piano layering synth after synth, looking for sounds that were textured and bright. Plucky. One big, emotional pad.


There was no method to this part of the process. I was not classically trained, and when I saw the music, it was in color. I placed my hands on the keys, and I knew which ones to press, but I could never tell you how.


For a long time, this was my greatest imposter syndrome. Should it be that I’m allowed to produce when I can’t even read sheet music? When I do all my creating from a place of feeling with little to no technique?


Here I am, still, orchestrating without understanding what the movements of my hands communicate, but I still tend to listen to my music as though I’m an amateur. Which is to say, I’m always listening for errors. Even the greats do this. To create is to give yourself to the furious world, unwrapped. No artist would deign to confuse completion with perfection.


With the sounds stacked for the morning, I bid the yellow Victorian adieu, driving my rental car back over the river, the sky perfectly clear, the seven o’clock sun giving downtown Richmond a tenuous look of sensibility. I had one final night in a city of great consequence, and I spent it at a wine bar, drinking white wine, reading in shuttered bursts when I wasn’t tempted by my phone and the news of Lousiana v. Callais, and eating fresh baguette straight from the bag when a staff member walked around offering tables free items from the bakery.


It was a hard sendoff the following morning. Taking the trash to the bins in the back alley. Piling towels on the kitchen floor. Putting my few dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Dragging my bag down the steps to the street. I had done it all before knowing I’d be back to do it again. But there would be no next time. This was it. And so, there was nothing tedious about it. However I could drag it out, the little child in me morbidly offended by change of any kind, I would.


So many meals I’d had on that leather couch. So many videos I’d filmed with my phone propped up on that mantel. This tiny Airbnb saw me through one of the most important eras of my life. An era of coming back to myself at the same time as Charlee Remitz broke through.


But of course, the studio was not yet done with the grief. That final song was a magnum opus. A favorite among the residents of the yellow Victorian I’d recorded my sixth studio album inside of. Where I’d watched snow fall through the windows. Where I’d helped imagine ambient lighting for the living room. Where I’d taken dozens of selfies in the downstairs bathroom filled with lips. Where I’d laughed at the expense of the dire, hungry cats sitting at the dining table, eating blue chips and veggies with hummus.

Each note of that final song was effort-filled. Each word sung was of the greatest, most extraordinary significance.


And what’s funny about it is, I just didn’t like it. I don’t know that I ever will. And I guess I could assume that’s why it was so hard for me to find my footing in it, or drift off, the way the art we love tends to carry us outside of the awareness of making it.


The entire time I was in the studio working on this song, I felt the enormity of my labor. It was excruciating. A song I complained about to my boyfriend, my mother, my best friend. A song so obstinate, I had to leave for two months to find the courage to be with it again.


But maybe that’s a good thing. When I packed up, I wasn’t totally sold on any of it. And maybe we need more art we’re not totally sold on because that’s the art acting as an agent of change in our lives. Pushing us from one place to another. Still ourselves, but willing to do and create outside of what we find strictly comfortable.


You’ll see what I mean when you hear it. Though, I have no great urgency to put any of it out. From my first EP in 2014 to now, so much had changed. Most of all, me.


I drove back to D.C., the highway cluttered and the sky still clear. I drank Campari spritzes in the lobby of my hotel, then took a scooter to Maydan, the afternoon just about the loveliest thing I had ever felt on my skin. When I walked back, in time to pop into Kramer’s, I remember thinking I was overwhelmed.


With what? I still don’t know. Already, I missed making the album. Already, I missed Richmond. I knew I always would. I think it’s the way everything feels fleeting. Most of all, this time of my life, when everything is consequential and I have so incredibly much to say. Fourteen songs could never encapsulate it all.


But beyond all that, I was grateful.


For everything.

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By Charlee Remitz • April 7, 2026
Otherwise known as the week of the Southeastern Freeze. I think many would agree there’s a certain symbiosis between nature and the general, personified tone of human life. The freeze was jarring. It seemed to come out of nowhere. I was piloting my rental car off the ferry from Ocracoke, moving through a heavy fog along the liminal space between the dock and Cape Hatteras, when my co-producer, Lawrence, texted: "I don’t know if you saw but we’ve got perhaps this huge snowstorm this weekend so plan accordingly!" The weather, these days, was jarring. As was going online at any given moment. And then there was this: I sat on the leather couch in my Airbnb a few days later, discussing my music with a potential collaborator on Google Meets, who said she hoped I would consider integrating Blue Monkey and Charlee Remitz a bit more, as Charlee Remitz’s social media had, since September 2025, generated a large swath of followers. It occurred to me right then that she was right. My mother had said something similar ahead of this trip, which would kick off six months of nearly non-stop travel while I attempted to finish the album and see another 200 lighthouses. “Is there something we could do to make your life ten percent easier?” There was. And, like all else these days, it was a jarring realization. Then again, that’s how most things seem when you’ve failed to pay attention to the less urgent signs that precede desperation. The universe is always having conversations with us; we just haven’t learned to listen. First, I’d had a falling out with my band. Then, my beloved visual collaborator moved out of state. And finally, there was the absolute dread I felt at composing a post for Blue Monkey’s Instagram page. At a certain point, Charlee Remitz and Blue Monkey felt like they were on a level playing field in that area. Both had something to say. And then, quite suddenly, one had more to say and more metaphorical mouths to feed. There is tremendous responsibility in having and maintaining an audience, whether it be in person or online. I kept telling myself as the album neared completion, I’d find a lust for Blue Monkey’s social media once again. I’d find some pocket of energy I wasn’t already using to shape Blue Monkey’s page. The only thing was, Charlee Remitz’s sudden uptick in online popularity felt partially divined. There was no protocol to follow and no miraculous, undiscovered pocket of energy from which I could pull. I was using every ounce of my allotted cup to see lighthouses, maintain Charlee Remitz’s online presence, and record a 14-song, full length album. Whatever was left over I held in reserve for workouts, nourishment and the upkeep of personal relationships. In this life, little is worth the compromise of your body, spirit, community or mind. And so, it was halfway through this fourth week in the studio that I announced to Lawrence, as we sat chatting in his dining room, with the sun pouring in through the windows and a cold brew on the table before me, that I would release this album as Charlee Remitz. I can’t quite remember his reaction. I think it was a little awed. And then, the freeze came. First it hit Nashville, where my partner, at our townhouse on the west side, lost heat for two weeks, and power for six days. Then, it came to Richmond, where I prepared my Airbnb as best as I could without spending money on emergency supplies. I stocked the empty cabinet with boxed mac n cheese, and the empty fridge with vegetables and containers of shredded chicken. I asked Tatiana, the owner, if she’d stock me up with extra toilet paper and paper towels, in case things got really dire. And then, I drove to the studio like any other day. Lawrence and I tried to negotiate studio time with the weather, to limit my exposure to a city with a few odd snowplows keeping hundreds of roads passable. In sessions past, we had a system: two days per song, and one wrap day where we ironed out the creases. For a three-song week, that meant seven days. For a two-song week, five. And so far, we had been deeply prolific. We had a measure of earned delusion when it came to studio time by January. We really believed in our ability to make art on a timeline. Even with the snow, and the oncoming freezing rain, we refused to deviate from the plan. I found myself on back-to-back days, driving at a snail’s pace from one side of the city to the other, simply so we could stick to the schedule we’d laid out for ourselves. There was a sense of, “I’ll get this album done if it’s the death of me,” pushing me forward as I passed people sliding in the snow, their tires struggling for purchase. On my one day off, when a sheet of hard-packed snow had laid itself over the city in a way that seemed to wipe every slate clean, I wandered the still, quiet streets as golden hour turned blue. A movie about a married couple separating, finding themselves, and then coming back together again was showing at the Byrd Theater. I purchased a ticket and an IPA, and I settled myself in the middle of the mostly empty theater, laying out my jacket so it could dry from the wintry mix. Watching that great push and pull was the first time in a long while I’d felt any kind of hope. I thought of this couple as a great reflection of Charlee Remitz and Blue Monkey. There was a crucial separation that needed to occur for me to come back to Charlee Remitz, nearly six years after quitting music in that capacity in the first place. I needed to become someone else, be something else, to give Charlee Remitz a second to breathe. To rest. To dream without the years of music I’d already created dragging along behind her like noisy cans. I’ve taken to referring to Blue Monkey as my Disney Channel Deviation. Many of us watched as our favorite Disney Channel stars, feeling shackled to a certain image, took a bold right turn and did something so dramatic that it shocked people into submission. This was Miley Cyrus now: on her wrecking ball. This was Charlee Remitz in 2024: Blue Monkey. I’d had all these rules about Blue Monkey’s album when I wrote and recorded it in 2020. It couldn’t be pop. It couldn’t have too many electronic sounds. It needed to be folk. It needed a banjo and a mandolin. A harmonica. It needed to drive one thing home: I was not Charlee Remitz anymore. When I think of it now, I recognize part of this need to disappear into Blue Monkey as an aversion to who Charlee Remitz had become. She felt like a dead end. Where I saw happenstance and luck and viability in other music careers, Charlee Remitz felt like she’d come by her very flat and lifeless story by effort and effort alone. It was messy and tiring, and certainly it wasn’t meant to be because nothing was happening. I remember completing my final album, Heaven’s a Scary Place like I was running the last leg of a cross-country sprint. I was absolutely, certifiably done with Charlee Remitz and everything she’d become by that point. I couldn’t wait to be rid of her. And so, I got rid of her. Well, that version of her at least. That was when I found the lighthouses. Or maybe they found me. I’m not really sure who did the finding, but certainly I’ve done the keeping. And, now here we are, five years later, in love as ever before. I moved across the country with my partner. I wrote songs on a guitar that I had no intention of ever actually recording. I went on solo dates. I did things because I wanted to do things. And, eventually, somewhere in that gentleness of pursuit just because, Charlee Remitz became viable again. Sometimes I think of this as a plant sitting dormant for years starting to sprout new leaves. In fact, in just the last year, my pink Anthurium grew a lily, something I never thought I’d see again, for the first time in years. It was just like that. Charlee Remitz felt possible again. I just needed some space and time away from what wasn’t working so I could find the confidence to not care if it ever did. So, here’s my art. I don’t give a shit if it resonates with you. Because it resonates with me. Really, what it cracks down to is this: I was not ready then. I was not confident in who I was or what I had to say. I was embarrassed to talk about my music because I couldn’t separate my worth from the concept of streams. I was too attached to the aesthetics of my social media rather than the impact of having a platform to advocate. Now, the music is less definitive and more whimsical. One small part of the mass of projects I’m constantly watering that make me me. Back then, the music needed to do something for me, which is why I was constantly disappointed. Now, the music just needs to be. And I with it. From a young age, my mother taught me to believe in timing, that when things aren’t working out… it doesn’t mean they never will. So, here we go again. “Paranoid”, Charlee Remitz’s first single in six years, is out May 29th . Find out more here.
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