At just 16, Sage Charmaine has built an impressive acting resume with roles in Boozy Mom, Victorious and Community. But music, she says, is “something I wanted to do my whole life,” and she’d doing it now with the upcoming EP Don’t Leave Me, whose video for the track “Ashes” is premiering exclusively below.
“I’ve been doing music my whole life,” Charmaine tells Billboard, starting in her grandfather’s church at the age of four and moving on to learn piano and other instruments. She moved to California initially to pursue music but wound up acting, which Charmaine feels ultimately benefitted her musical ambitions.
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“While I was acting I spent time perfecting my voice and finding my sounds, figuring out what I wanted to do with my actual singing,” she says. “Growing up I listened to everything, all kinds of music. In my middle school years I got into a lot of punk and scream-o type of music, like Warped Tour shit, and then later I started getting more into rap and old rock music, and then I started liking indie music as well.
“I kind of went through a lot of phases and tried a lot of things out. I wanted to see where I sounded best and what I wrote best.”
Though decidedly in the pop and rock realm, the material on Don’t Leave Me, due out during April, displays some of that diversity — often created on a whim, according to Charmaine. She came up with the idea for “Ashes,” one of three collaborations with The Driver Era’s Rocky Lynch (formerly of R5) — who appears in the video — on the way to the studio. “I just felt like making an R&B song,” Charmaine recalls. “Usually when I have a session scheduled I listen to music all day and reflect what mood I’m in, and when I go in and write I’ll pick from that and then decide what kind of beat I want and write over that. That’s what happened with ‘Ashes.’ It was fun.”
So was working with Lynch, who remixed Charmaine’s single “Cherries” last summer. “We work well together and get along pretty good,” says Charmaine, who also collaborates with CupcakKe and Lil Aaron on the EP. “We both like a lot of the same music. I tell him what I’m seeing in my head and I feel like he well captures what I’m thinking and executes it how I want.”
Charmaine will return to the road at the end of February, touring again with Bhad Bhabie. She’s hoping to headline after the EP’s release, but her real focus is on the studio and making more music, including a full album for which she has one song “halfway done.” “A lot of the music that’s on this EP has been a long time coming,” Charmaine says. “I’m finally going to get all this old music I’ve been working on for the past year and a half out. I’m really excited about that, but I’m even more excited about what I’m working on now.”