WATCH / SHARE “LIGHTER” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
CHARLIE HOUSTON’S DEBUT ALBUM, BIG AFTER I DIE, OUT TODAY VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
BUY / STREAM BIG AFTER I DIE HERE
"Buzzy pop songs that recall Billie Eilish as much as they do Le Tigre, Charlie Houston's Big After I Die is a punchy collection of sapphic love songs and bruising kiss offs. Slyly strange but never lacking pop hooks, songs like "Slut for Excel" (is that a Talking Heads sample bubbling in the background?) and "Pink Cheetah Print Slip" are bursting with personality and major songwriting chops. Get used to the name Charlie Houston." Exclaim!, Most Anticipated Albums of 2025
"Already with a collaboration with ODESZA and an opening slot on Charlotte Cardin’s tour under her belt, Toronto’s Charlie Houston is ready to unleash her debut album on the world. Inspired primarily by a tough breakup and finding her analyzing themes of codependency and growth, Houston’s songs exist in-between acoustic folk and dreamy, hazy indie-pop. In a post-Chappell Roan world, it feels like Houston has the same combination of total authenticity and playful pop." RANGE, Frequency Forecast 2025
"Since releasing her debut 5-song EP I Hate Spring in 2021, Houston has toured with ODESZA, Charlotte Cardin and The Beaches, earned millions of streams and landed a Spotify billboard in New York’s Times Square. Clearly one to watch." Billboard Canada, Anticipated 2025 Albums
Photo Credit : Lourdes Lasala // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Charlie Houston releases her debut album, Big After I Die, a captivating 9-song journey through the uncertainty and beauty of self-discovery during life’s transitional phases. “When hearing the phrase ‘big after I die’, it would make sense for most people’s immediate interpretation to be something about getting famous after dying. However, this is not the meaning for me,” says Houston. “I’m not talking about death in a literal sense, I’m interpreting ‘death’ as the end of something. The something in this case being a very defining two-year relationship. And ‘big’ does not mean getting famous, but rather the inevitable change that occurs when something like a relationship ends. In a sense the person I was in the relationship was metaphorically killed, and I am now evolving into a new version of myself.
“These songs reflect the person I used to be while in relationships – very anxious, felt like I needed a partner to be happy, type deal – and the person I’m slowly becoming when it’s just me. I think I’ve always been terrified to lose people because I have a habit of centering my life and happiness around one person. So, losing them feels like losing everything, which is exactly what happened in September last year.”
To celebrate the album’s release, Houston is sharing the new video for standout track “Lighter”, a track that further highlights the tension of the album as it builds into a cathartic celebration of the complexities of change and the thrilling possibility of what comes next. “Are you scared of losing the person you love?,” asks Houston. “Have you ever considered killing them just so you don’t have to worry about losing them anymore because they’re dead? No? That’s fair because that’s sort of psychotic. BUT, anxiety can make one feel psychotic.”
WATCH / SHARE “LIGHTER” LYRIC VIDEO HERE
BUY / STREAM BIG AFTER I DIE HERE
MORE ABOUT CHARLIE HOUSTON
Growing up around Toronto, Houston was the youngest of four siblings. When she was eight years old, her dad, a fellow musician who used to play in local garage punk bands, gifted her a guitar. Whereas many singer-songwriters got their start performing covers, Houston remained focused on “making something that didn’t exist before.” She also began learning how to produce for herself on GarageBand, which felt like “unlocking a whole other world.” Houston’s music has always felt technical in its nuance and attention to detail, where melody and topline interlace themselves seamlessly, and the dreamy sonic exterior almost makes you forget what’s lurking underneath. Her songs are rife with nostalgia: the ghosts of people and places far gone but still fresh with emotional impact. Big After I Die rises from the ashes of these past experiences: Houston scrapped an entire hypothetical album after going through an intense break up. The songs she had written during a period of domestic bliss were now reminders of life’s many paths. “I didn't really know who I was or who I wanted to be outside of her,” explains Houston. That searching would soon become the focus of her debut album.
WATCH / SHARE “LEWPS” LIVE PERFORMANCE HERE
Houston’s break-up wasn’t the first time she had to pick up the pieces: after high school, she was accepted to New York’s prestigious Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, and attended for one semester before dropping out after a bad experience with psychedelics left her with paralyzing, existential anxiety about her greater purpose. Moving back to Ontario to attend Queen's University, she reconnected with an old friend who encouraged her to start writing her own original material again.
“Since I had gone to NYU for music, leaving felt like a failure.” explains Houston. “But I began to see a new path in music as an artist that I don’t think I would have discovered had I stayed at NYU.”
Working with producer Chris Yonge, Houston signed to storied indie label Arts & Crafts to release her debut 5-song EP I Hate Spring in 2021. Her naturally inviting, plainspoken voice over downtempo electronic production caught the attention of popular electronic duo ODESZA. The resulting collaboration landed her a spot on their Grammy Award-nominated album, The Last Goodbye, and North American stadium tour. Houston then joined rising pop star Charlotte Cardin as a support act on her cross-country Canadian tour before releasing her sophomore EP 2022’s Bad Posture. By 2023, Houston had racked up millions of streams, landed a Spotify billboard in New York’s Times Square, and earned the praise of tastemakers like Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, all before she finished her undergraduate degree. Yet while she had begun to rebuild faith in herself, she continued to struggle to find purpose in the milestones that she’d accomplished.
WATCH / SHARE “SLUT FOR EXCEL” HERE
“I think the philosophical anxiety I developed at NYU towards not just my own purpose, but the purpose of humans generally was something that I felt like I had to get rid of. I went to therapy and started taking medication to try and stop these thoughts. But I’ve started to realize that these thoughts and that experience in New York has made me who I am. I’m weirded out and confused by my own existence and I’m okay with that”
Houston’s longstanding creative partnership with her producer had always been reassuringly comfortable: “Chris [Yonge] and I had such a formula we knew worked, but it was really focused on writing to the beat. I was interested in challenging myself and putting my songwriting first as opposed to production.” For Big After I Die, Houston leaned into more dynamic songwriting, inspired by musicians like Courtney Barnett that made “music that is thrown in front of you”. For the first time, “the songs were all written without touching a computer,” with no plan of connecting the tracks to a greater concept album. It was only after returning to the collection of songs that she was able to connect the dots and realize there was an overarching story to the music. “Lighter,” a breakthrough track that sparked many of the other songs on the album, intones: “I’ll be lost / if I’m not right for you,” pinpointing the intense anxiety she continues to navigate around being alone. Houston’s struggles with mental health permeate the album: on the frenetic “Lewps” she decries the “loops inside my head” over and over. The record is a documentation of Houston’s attachment issues of finding herself through others, an idea she continues to return to. Initially written from the vantage point of a romance, the downtempo “Spiral” explores the tendency to seek solace in other people, and being scared to lose someone to a personal fault. “I think I’ve always been terrified to lose people because I have a habit of centering my life and happiness around one person. So losing them can feel like losing everything” she explains.
WATCH / SHARE “PINK CHEETAH PRINT SLIP” HERE
While Big After I Die grapples with the intense emotions and heavy themes of codependency, sonically Houston takes a much more playful approach, and sounds the most comfortable she's ever been. Working alongside new creative partner Duncan Hood, all the tracks were recorded as slow indie folk songs with acoustic guitar and piano, while being infused with Houston’s trademark quirky realism and attention to joyful experimentation. Initially, many of the songs on the project were written through the lens of love songs, but in hindsight they transformed into greater contemplations about who she is meant to be, and how she continues to grow. "Experiencing life alone for the first time,” Houston feels at home and settled into her body, including her queerness: “it’s very evident one song is about a girl (rollicking, upbeat highlight “Pink Cheetah Print Slip”)”.
The title Big After I Die is taken less as a literal idea and more about “this desire that I feel to keep developing and growing after the ending,” whether the end of a specific relationship or a period of time in her life. Although she just graduated with a degree in philosophy, the record is her own personal thesis examining her search to find greater meaning in life: the omnipresent, existential questions that she had been fixated on for so long. It also signifies a rebirth, of faith in herself and her intuition. Houston went back and forth on whether she should write a song that felt triumphant, an optimistic conclusion to the end of one transitional period, but ultimately decided against it. For Houston, it’s not the end that needs to be celebrated: life is just beginning.
BUY / STREAM BIG AFTER I DIE HERE
CHARLIE HOUSTON LIVE
February 13 - Toronto | The Monarch Tavern | Tickets
BIG AFTER I DIE TRACKLIST
01 Pink Cheetah Slip
02 Lighter
03 Salt
04 Stupid Love
05 Spiral
06 Slut For Excel
07 The Descent
08 Lewps
09 I Need U
MORE PRAISE FOR CHARLIE HOUSTON
“Sometimes the words don't come immediately — after all, asking someone to be that vulnerable isn't easy — and it can take all night before you feel ready. But when that moment happens, let's hope that it can sound and feel as sweet as this indie-pop ode to young love. CBC Music on “All Night”
“... casts back to timeless memories of fumbling early romance—first kisses, messy breakups, and short-lived flirtations are all soundtracked by weightless indie pop and R&B stylings” – Under The Radar
“It’s a striking debut, an unguarded, ultra-personal tapestry—stories of heartbreak and struggle, sung in her soothing, signature voice” – SPIN
“‘Things’ is an unadulterated look at youthful insecurities and unrequited affection. Over a somber but punchy backdrop, she delivers an evocative performance that is ripe with honesty” – EARMILK
