INTERVIEW: Charlie Collins releases third album, the brutally honest 'Nightwriter': "I broke down a lot making this record."

Words: Jett Tattersall
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 29 August 2025

Acclaimed music-maker Charlie Collins has done more than craft an exceptional album—she's created a whole concept. Nightwriter - out today - is a noun, a myth, a creature: a unicorn’s after-hours cousin. For Collins, writing in the "witching hours" isn’t just where she thrives; it's become her very essence. The hush of night forms a cocoon, holding the best and worst of our thoughts. This album is a lone creature, and, though sonically one of melodious beauty, thematically, its mirror locked in place, is terrifying as all hell.

Nightwriter is Collins’ journey through raw confessions and whispered second-guessing. Through it, she guides us along the arduous road from a painful, rebuffed past toward self-forgiveness and redemption. Each track is a self-contained myth, yet Collins’ succinct artistic vision connects all. At its core, this is a collection of deeply personal yet accessible songs that document Collins' recovery from toxic relationships and addiction.

Lead single, 'Transactional Deal,' is a smouldering pressure cooker of a track inspired by the insane world of modern dating. Collins explores the "tension between objectifying and being objectified," pulling from compromising positions for affection and the toll on her sense of self.

The album confronts a brutal, sobering fear: that by closing the door on self-destructive chaos, Collins would lose her ability to create. As luck would have it, this "naked honesty" has always been the foundation of her success—a factor that earned her consecutive ARIA Music Award nominations for her music Snowpine (2020) and Undone (2022).

On 'Rock Bottom,' a pop-rock belter with top notes of country, Collins shares a story born from a substance overdose. "This one hit hard in every way, and my words here tell the story,” she has said of the track. 'The Last 48 Hours,' a collaboration with Neil Finn, tackles her addictive personality head-on, even in sobriety. She admits that she was still "trying to chase a high" through nicotine, caffeine, or relationships. The track's raw, bluegrass instrumental and Collins' smirk-soaked vocals transform this brutal self-reflection into something delightful. It’s a surprising contrast given the heavy subject matter, but this juggle of light and shade is Collins' sweet spot. As she says, "musically I wanted it to be fun, not like woe is me but more ‘fuck it, this is who I am.’"

'You Might Be A Man, Just Not Man Enough' whispers the essence of the album's namesake—a darkly comedic, late-night, heady-waltzing reflection on a toxic relationship with an unworthy beau. "I wish I was worth fighting for / I'm more like the late-night show you watch when you are bored," Collins confesses. Yet, the music never wallows; the beat and relieved exhale pick up like a rolling getaway wagon, rolling into tracks such as 'Kinder, Lighter, Brighter Shade Of Blue' and 'Sincerely, Not Yours,' where Collins delivers another cutting truth from her sombre hours epiphany: “I lost all of my self-respect ‘cause you made me feel different… and not in the cool and western cowboy kinda way.”

'I'm In The Right Place' closes the album and lands perfectly, lifted as the sun peeks through the cracks under the door. "I want to feel lonely, cos I'm learning to love myself," Collins sings, shedding her cape and letting her guard down. She finds strength in asking for patience, coming to terms with the artist looking back at her. Ultimately, Nightwriter is a testament to the power of a single artist to find purpose and beauty in the quiet chaos of her own making.

We recently sat down with Collins to chat more about the creation if Nightwriter.

Hello Charlie! Nightwriter, what an incredible album. It's so divine. I wanted to ask you about title track and the delicious opener ‘Nightwriter’ It's like an ode to songwriting and to journaling. It's so, so beautiful.
Thank you so much! I wanted to open the record with that song because of what you said it. It feels like a step into my world of how I write songs. Everything kind of comes to me at night, when I've processed the day, and I'm just me, and in my room, in my space. I can get my my thoughts out into words. That’s why I wanted that to start the record, why I also wanted that to be the title. I didn't want to give also too much away through the album title, so it's kind of more an overall vision of me.

I love this, because it so eloquently plays out in the track, of you getting home and scrawling out your words. I feel there are moments of this throughout the album, like on ‘I’m Alright’, which really conveys a feeling of lying on your bedroom floor writing.
It's funny you say that because ‘I'm Alright’ Is actually just the iPhone recording that I recorded in my bedroom. ‘Nightwriter’ is actually also a iPhone demo. I wanted to keep it as real as possible. So it’s awesome that you got that kind of vibe with it, because that's exactly where it was recorded.

I love that. You're on your bedroom floor, but you also recorded this whole thing in like three weeks at Neil Finn's Roundhead Studios. It's a very intense turnaround for such a meaty album. How did the bedroom floor and the studio fuel the record?
So I had all these iPhone demos and this body of work that I felt told my story of the last few years perfectly. I didn't want to dress it up too much with pre production, so I just went over to New Zealand with those iPhone demos. Neil wasn't even meant to be a part of the record as much as he was, the goal was to maybe get him on a song or two. On the second day, he ended up just walking in, picked up the bass, and was like ‘alright, hit record’. He ended up coming in every day and worked so closely with the producer Steven Schram on the record. We just built it from the ground up, we didn't have any preconceived ideas of what we wanted it to sound like. We just wanted to serve the songs in the best way possible. It kind of started from this little seed, and they all kind of grew into their own plants or flowers, and we created a garden.

It's such a garden! And I say this was recorded so quickly, but I imagine a lot of these songs, parts of them, melodies and lyrics and ideas have been personal notes to yourself for many years. It still takes a long time for a song to become a song.
Yeah, of course. Every song on the album is very is deliberately placed, it goes through events in the order of the album track listing, which is something I really wanted. Albums means so much to me, and I wanted to create this story from start to finish.

What are a couple of those album story books that you loved listening to, that became benchmarks for you?
For me an album that has been a big impact on my songwriting and storytelling is Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen. I don't think it’s necessarily in order of events, but just the storytelling and the real, true life events that happen, and putting things so raw and honestly. That’s what I wanted to capture.

Beautiful, and with your background, you grew up in Tamworth with country music, and I often hear people ask you if you still consider yourself a country artist. I feel like if you've been raised on that kind of music and storytelling, it's always going to be there, no matter what the music may sound like.
Oh, 100%. When something is embodied in you, you can't really shake that, because it's kind of the core of who I am. Telling my stories in the most honest form. I actually can't make up stories! Music is therapy, you know? And so I write out everything I'm feeling to kind of get it out, and then it turns into a song. It's pretty much my diary entries, really. When we were upstairs in Neil Finn’s little studio, he pulled me aside and said, ‘I feel like I'm reading your diary at times, and at times I feel like I shouldn't be because it's so personal, but that's such a good thing, because you don't dress up the truth. You just say it as it is.’ That was something that really stuck by me, and something that I think I'll carry with me always. Tell your truth in the most honest, rawest way.

That's so beautiful and so true, and equally obscenely confronting to hear, particularly when someone's looking at you!
Yes! You feel so exposed. Even when I wrote this record, it was like, oh shit, now I have to put it out there in the world and everyone is going to know me on such a deeper level because I'm so exposed, and I haven't held anything back. I talk about some really tough things.

Speaking of, ‘Rock Bottom’, that has some very confronting moments. But what I love is you've paired that with a melody and a production that feels like we're going on a road trip, a joyous road trip.
Yes, it's the sense of when you hit those lows, you keep moving forward. It is about still driving and moving forward and it's a journey, right? You just keep going, no matter how many times you fall. But hopefully each time you fall, you get up a little bit quicker.

Can I ask you in amongst this collection, is there any song in particular when you first performed it live that you thought, ‘oh shit, I have to sing this one’. Was there any in particular that was gonna be a real problem?
I don't think it was so much so ‘oh shit, I have to play this live’, but when I recorded ‘Rock Bottom’ that was one where I was like, ‘shit, I have to sing this and record this.’ That brought up a lot of past things, because I essentially had to put myself in this time and space of where I was not okay, and I had to go back there and relive those events to get the best emotion out. So that was really hard. I broke down a lot making this record. But live, it was cathartic, and it was actually more of a beautiful thing. I get emotional singing the songs live because of seeing how far I've come in such a short space of time.

You've got so much going on on Nightwriter. We've got road trip, we've got acoustic, we got bedroom floor, we’ve got a little shoegazy grunge. But my favourite track on the album, ‘You Might Be A Man, Just Not Man Enough’, it's a waltz! You got a waltz in there!
I know! I’ve got everything! That's actually one of my favourite songs on the record, and one of my favourite songs to play live. Again, it just happened! That one was so special to record. Neil was doing this live session with Jimmy Barnes and a couple of incredible New Zealand artists, and he asked me to sing on that, and it was live streamed for the whole world. I was halfway through recording these songs, I hadn't even finished them and I played that one live with Neil playing piano and Jimmy on harmonies. It was like, I love this song, and I can't believe I'm playing this with these absolute icons. What is my life?

You've said before that apart from making these incredible albums, you've always been for the girls, and you've always encouraged women to say the uncomfortable thing, which I think is such a beautiful sentiment and such a precise M.O. to have. Did this come from your earlier country roots, or has it come over time when you yourself realised, as a songwriter, that rawness, that confronting journaling wasn't just allowed, but it was powerful, and it's something everyone should harness a piece of?
Yeah, I think I've always wanted to help people through music. That's one of my main things. As I evolved into a woman and experienced some really traumatic things as a woman and seeing that there are some topics that are really hard for women to speak up about, there was a conscious decision to really talk about that stuff. To be open with my journey to help other women to speak up about their experiences with life, things that happen, or traumatic things. That was definitely a conscious decision to help women have a voice and speak up about the tough stuff, and that it's okay. You shouldn't be embarrassed about things that you've gone through or that has happened to you. It's something we all should talk about more. Especially with social media, everything can seem so perfect but the thing is it's not and we can't get through it alone.

So it’s also a thing to make people feel they are less alone. And also for me, when people reach out to me, it makes me feel less alone that other people have gone through similar things. It's this communal love you get with each other, and it's a beautiful space to live in together.

Are you finding that, as an artist today, everyone's so quick to shit on the way we consume music and social media, but it many ways it gives this clarity as to who you are as an artist and what this song is and who it's for. You get this connection to the fans, the gloss has been removed, or any gloss that's created is created by the artist alone. I feel like things are just so much more immediate, but in a personal way, as opposed to a consumable way.
People aren't dressing things up as much and it's not something that you have to sit on. You can immediately tell your truth and immediately try to make change and create that awareness.

It doesn't have to go through the this whole web of things, it can just go direct. People just want to hear the truth. People want real and raw, they can relate to that right? When something's real and raw, that's relatable, when something is perfect and polished, it's unattainable and unrelatable. People latch on to things that are more raw and relatable.

100%. Your parents apparently once told you that your voice needed medical attention! Are they converted now as to how incredible your pipes are?
Yes! Honestly, I've always had this husky voice. If you listen on the record, at the end of one of the songs, I think it's the last track, there's this little interview of me when I was 12 and I sound exactly the same!

I had a singing teacher when I was nine, and she was very musical theatre, opera-ish vibes, and because my voice was just so fucking different from everyone else, she was like, ‘you should give up, you won't have a voice by the time you're 18’. And so my parents freaked out, and they thought there was something wrong with my vocal cords. They took me to an ENT doctor and they were no, there's nothing wrong and they asked if I screamed a lot as a kid, and my brain goes back to me as a kid, just screaming songs and yelling over the top of everyone. I think I was just a noisy child. I just couldn't keep my mouth shut!

Well, that was where I was going to close this interview. because I thought it was so beautiful, your closer at the end of ‘Riot Place’ of your interview at 12 years old. You said you want to just keep doing what you're doing, and if something happens, well it happens, which I think is so beautiful.
I wanted that because it's a reminder to me of why I do music and why I love it. Ever since I was a kid, it was never about fame or money or success, it was just because of the pure love and joy I get from doing it. And when you get older, it's about helping people and making a difference, or feeling successful within yourself. When I hear that, it keeps me grounded and it reminds me of why I do what I do.

Nightwriter is out now via Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Charlie Collins on Instagram, and Facebook.