Charlotte Hatherley Appreciation

I’m not sure how many of you dear readers were/are fans of Irish rock pop ensemble Ash, but when I was a kid I was thoroughly obsessed with them. Seriously, I’d never felt such feverish passion for a band in my life, and it seems unlikely I ever will again. There’s just something about the hearts of fourteen year old girls, you know?

Anyway, when I fell in love with Ash, I had two dreams. The first was to marry front man Tim Wheeler. I truly thought this would happen. When I went to Ireland as a fifteen year old and visited their hometown of Downpatrick and didn’t run into them and therefore failed in my plan to make Tim fall in love with me, I felt genuine disappointment and grief. The second Ash-related dream? To join the band as their teen chick guitarist and travel the world. Sure, being in a band with my lover might be difficult at times, but we’d manage. It all seemed so inevitable.

And then those bastards recruited a teen chick guitarist and she was not me and I was absolutely furious. I swore I could never love Ash again. How dare they do something like that to their biggest fan/future wife? It was cruel and hurtful.

So imagine my surprise a few years ago to find myself very much enjoying the solo works of aforementioned teen chick guitarist, a lass by the name of Charlotte Hatherley. Her download only single of 2004 “Kim Wilde” was on high rotation at Chez Jess for a loooooong time.

For some reason I thought of her again today and trawled YouTube to see what she’s done since. I appear to like her later works as well, so I’ll have to track down a copy of her last record. In the meantime, would you like to hear some nice girl poprock? Here’s the ‘Kim Wilde’ song I told you about. No official clip, unfortunately, but you can still hear it.

And here is another one from that era, a tune called ‘Summer’.

And here’s a more recent song called ‘I Want You To Know’ which I like very much. Nice drums! Also: I would like to be a boxer.

Sweet melodic stuff. Not for everyone, but I certainly enjoy it.

MORE: Charlotte Hatherley @ MySpace