Growing into a melodic dark pop songstress with sexy lyrics, Sage Charmaine has set the stage to be the Queen of edgy millennial pop. Sage has always known she’s wanted to first and foremost be a musician. She learned to play guitar and piano as a child and learned to write songs as early as age nine. Since then, she’s fine-tuned her sound as an artist, and pulls her musical inspiration from pop legends like Michael Jackson and emo-rock royalty groups like My Chemical Romance — which makes for the perfect mix of melodic pop music with equal parts honesty and edge.
Interview Meikee Magnetic
Where were you born, where are you now?
I was born in Amarillo, Texas and I lived there until I was about 11 years old. I permanently settled in Los Angeles to pursue my career about 6 years ago.
How has Los Angeles been treating you?
Los Angeles has always treated me well, it’s definitely my favorite place to be. Even when I go back to the Texas and Oklahoma area I get homesick for LA really fast. Compared to where I’m from in Texas, there’s so much more to do here and the people are much more open minded, accepting, and ambiguous so it’s a lot more lively and inspiring in my opinion.
As an edgy millennial pop artist, what was the path taken to reach this sound?
Well, when I hit my emo phase I was about 9 or 10, and I instantly fell heavily in love with My Chemical Romance. I really got into their music and then later I got into Pierce The Veil, Falling In Reverse, and shit like that. Because of this, I thought I’d wanna be do the same type of genre, but after pursuing it until I was about 12, the phase seemed to go away and so did my interest in the genre. I ended up getting more into indie music such as Grouplove and Arctic Monkeys so I began experimenting with a more indie-pop sound. After another year of that, I decided to kind of start blending the two genres of punk/alt and indie-pop together. When I turned 14, I finally had more of a feel for what I wanted to do. I started slowly experimenting with more R&B elements in some songs, and experimenting with edgy pop in others. This is why I consider myself to be “genre-less” because I feel like my creativity when it comes to my music is limitless, since I love to explore and experiment in my songs.
CLICK ABOVE PIC FOR ITUNES
Your music video ‘Not Really’ has a matured sound and edge beyond your years. Do you see yourself as an old soul and if so tell us why:
I’d say that I do in a way because I’ve always felt like I was more mentally matured than most people my age and even older than me as well. I’ve never been into the super girly and poppy type of thing so I always leaned more towards being edgier and more grown up. Even as a young girl, I remember disliking Barbies because I thought they were super girly and bland, but Bratz dolls completely captivated me because of their over-exaggerated features and style.
Being a young artist do you find it works to your advantage or are there hardships you encounter more often then you’d like?
I think it works to my advantage in ways such as being able to keep my energy up when I have to perform multiple days back to back and even sometimes performing after coming off of a long ass flight. I feel like as I get older, my stamina will slowly decrease, especially because I’ve started this lifestyle and career so early on but it’s worth it so I don’t give a fuckkk. In other ways, however, I feel like being younger is a huge disadvantage since people in this industry always seem to connect talent and ability with experience when in fact, that isn’t always the case. There’s a ton of young artists who are naturally extremely talented and they don’t have years and years of experience under their belt, and therefore they often get looked down upon and taken for a bit of a joke.
What have you been working on musically most recently?
Aside from finishing up the EP, I had began another project that I want to aim to come out in the fall. It’s definitely another thing I’d say I’m “experimenting” with~ it’s got more of a LoFi with trap-beats type of feel.
Describe your best day:
I’d say my best day in my career is any day that I have a solid performance. To me, a solid performance means I was able to completely let myself go and embody my alter ego as “Sage Charmaine,” and also good engagement and response to and from the crowd is always a plus as well. If you’re talking about my best day as just normal Sage, however, then nothing beats chilling and cuddling all day, binge watching some dumb shit with my boyfriend the whole time while we be on our fat shit with 7/11 snacks lmaoooo.
Favorite food:
My favorite food is forever warm chocolate chip cookies. They are so fucking good to me and I can’t tell u why.
Future plans:
In the future, I’d love to accomplish so much more with my music and shows. I want to further evolve as a musician, and keep releasing music that people can relate to and enjoy and be able to look back and see the growth and change I’ve had as an artist. I’d also love to get into the makeup and fashion industry later on in my life, but for now music is my primary focus.
What does Dark Beauty mean to you?
I’d say every girl has a dark and sultry side to them, I relate and express that a lot through my music, such as my song and video concept for “Not Really.” My lyrics tend to sound soft, but the actual words and meanings behind them are not. My manager say’s I’m like a sour patch kid LOL.
MORE INFO:
www.sagecharmaine.com
www.facebook.com/officialsagecharmaine
