We need to Break the Rhythm, that's what Charlie Burg. Hear his latest here!
Photo by Dannah Gottlieb
On the heals of a sold-out show at Los Angeles’ Troubadour, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Charlie Burg has dropped new single, “Break The Rhythm” via FADER Label. Hailing from Detroit and now living in Brooklyn with a stop in Syracuse, NY in-between, the track finds Charlie deftly unpacking rootlessness with indie rock-influenced soundtrack. He shares:
The second chapter begins and so does the metaphorical thunderstorm. I wrote ‘Break The Rhythm’ in a hotel room in a small town in Texas on tour. While I was happy to be on my first tour, I felt a rootlessness that I couldn’t describe. Hadn’t I wanted this my whole career? Shouldn’t I be happy? It was also written amidst some heavy conversations about politics and religion with some close friends who were changing. At that point in life, I wasn’t sure how to cope with change at all. This song was written with a sense of doubt, feeling lost, and a painful ejection from childhood, an entrance into an unfamiliar world. The house (both literal and metaphorical) of childhood has been demolished, and I’m struggling to process it all in this new world.
Burg’s show in Los Angeles was part of a West Coast run where he played “Break the Rhythm” alongside the recently released “97 Avalon” as well as songs off the 3 EPs that put him on the map. He has 3 upcoming shows this month:
5/11 - Subterranean - Chicago, IL
5/12 - The Loving Touch - Detroit, MI - We will be at this show! Come say Hi if you see us!
5/17 - Bowery Ballroom - New York City, NY
Described by Variety as "an R&B-leaning singer-songwriter,” music has always been in Charlie Burgs life. When he was five years old he found his father's acoustic guitar in his hands and soon began self-teaching songs from the Beatles and Coldplay as part of his musical journey. Early influences spanned the classic sounds of Motown, Hall & Oates, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, along with formative teenage touchstones like pop-punk and hip-hop. Burg started writing his own songs when he got to college. It was a formative time in which he began to draw from the soulful music that dotted his youth and upbringing. Burg now lives in Brooklyn and has released three EPs — One, Violet, Two, Moonlight, and Three, Fever — which grabbed the attention of major tastemakers at Beats1 and Spotify, the press both in the US and UK, and the FADER Label, to which he is now signed.