REVIEW: Charlotte Sands - Satellite

CHARLOTTE SANDS’ biggest strength has always been her vulnerability. She wears her heart on her sleeve, with bold, openly-emotional lyrics and deep sentimental meanings woven into the fabric of her songs. 2024 saw the release of her debut album can we start over? and very soon, she’s set to release her follow-up - an album built on the personal growth following that first record. Through Satellite, SANDS takes us on a journey of self-discovery, through breakups and cycles of sadness to embracing the fun the night offers, with an inherent relatability easy to latch onto. She does this with haunting vocals and a genre-shifting sound that feels simultaneously ripped from the early noughties and also uniquely modern.

Satellite serves as the opener for this record, easing us in with a round of trippy beats and the silky-smooth vocals we’ve come to expect from the singer. As the track progresses, she builds up to increasingly-powerful vocals, echoing the track (and album) title. It’s a strong introduction, and leads us into a standout single; one eye open. On display is heart-wrenching honesty, with an instrumental that fades from crashing, waterfall-like drums to the serene river of her siren-song vocals. The song is upfront with its message: love shouldn’t have to feel like survival, and you shouldn’t have to sleep with one eye open. If you’ve ever been trapped in a controlling relationship, this is an intense anthem for you to find strength in.

HUSH takes us to the other end of SANDS’ musical spectrum; just when she has us sinking into our feelings, she drags us back up with dance-worthy bangers like this. This track is one of two worlds: it’s mosh pit meets club night, less about finding meaning in the world and more about letting go for the night, embracing the fun life has to offer. “It’s time for brat rock summer,” the singer says about the track, and we couldn’t agree more. half alive follows with an almost-metalcore instrumental that blends with sonorous vocals into a track that feels designed for the artist’s electric live performances. Afterlife takes that vocal thread and ties it to impassioned inner meanings; this is about a love so powerful it persists not just through this lifetime, but into the next. This feels more than a love song to a partner - it feels addressed to the fans that have stuck by her and supported her through the years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyUjVp9n11s

On the polar opposite side is back to you, the soundtrack to a breakup scene in a melodramatic teen movie from the 2000s. Backed by the strums of an acoustic guitar, the singer leads us into a vivid anthem that takes us right back to our teen years; we can picture ourselves belting out the chorus in a bedroom decorated in magazine-cutout posters of dye-haired emo bands. It’s about being stuck in a relationship where every decision, every ‘what if’, leads you back to where you started. The song, much like its singer, goes through cycles; it goes from gentle, acoustic strums to emotionally-charged intensity, and back again.

neckdeep is the clear evolution from those feelings, laced with angsty lyrics and heavier, rock-focused instrumentals. “Why would you tell me that you’re neck deep when you’re really just one foot out?” the singer questions, channelling her inner turmoil at the neglect she’s facing in this relationship. She tries to convince herself that she’s okay, that she’s not being torn apart from the inside, but her soul-stirring vocals betray her facade. She continues that idea of pretend into water me down, where she sings about striving after the idealised image of perfection desired by a partner. Being watered down into something acceptable, a picture of a person that isn’t true to herself, but easily digestible. Pretty, but not enough that people stare; dressed up, but only in her partner’s presence. It’s about changing yourself to fit a partner’s insecurity, and how damaging that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Xj66C7i3w

None of My Business features a welcome return to the crunchy beats and rapid-fire sound of tracks like spite and pity from the singer’s previous album. Very AVRIL LAVIGNE, especially when the chorus hits; the singer cultivates an electric atmosphere with a massive, mosh-worthy instrumental to get the whole room moving, with lyrics that will surely have the crowd chanting along. We know this track will be blasting from our surround-sound systems all summer. Sunday wraps up the album with a calmer sound to its predecessor, acoustic strums melting into beautiful, melodic vocals. These last two tracks are a perfect contrast that sum up CHARLOTTE SANDS musically: a frenetic, punchy rock rager into a serene pop tune, both sure to be staples of her future setlists.

If there’s anything Satellite tells us about CHARLOTTE SANDS, it’s that she contains multitudes. In the space of ten tracks, she takes us through heart-wrenching intimate ballads, into punchy, anthemic crowd-pleasers, and then acoustic breakup-scene bangers. Not only pushing her genre-blurring musical vision to new lengths, she also spends the record’s runtime providing incredible introspection into her emotional state and creating something wholly relatable, no matter what stage of life you’re at.

Score: 9/10

Satellite will be released on 6th March 2026 via CS Records.

Words: Naomi Colliar Duff

Photos: Megan Clark