Charlotte OC: “I think that’s just one thing I’ve realised now – I’m very much myself. There’s more Northern in my voice now than ever when I’m performing.”

Charlotte OC’s (Charlotte O'Connor) latest EP, Seriously Love, Go Home, doesn’t pull its punches. The title alone sounds like a stern warning, and as the singer-songwriter tells, that’s exactly the point.

“It was basically the voice in my head that I was ignoring.” she said.

“I was just being an absolute nutter in London but constantly thinking that I needed to stay there because it was for my music. But in reality, it could not have been more of a worse place for me to be. I was just deteriorating slowly. So really, [Seriously Love, Go Home] is just about really listening to your gut.”

The phrase, she goes on to explain, carries a "maternal" energy too, like another version of herself stepping in to care for her.

“I think it was kind of me just looking after myself, but choosing not to.” she reflected.

“When I finally did, I realised the effect of me actually going home, and I was trying to let myself know that this was the best thing for me.”

That theme of self-acceptance runs through our entire conversation. Charlotte laughs as she recalls a fan recently digging up one of her earliest songs, written when she was sixteen and uploaded to MySpace.

“[The fan] was like, ‘Are you the girl who sang 'Oscar'?’ and was asking if it was on Spotify and I said ‘No, it’s not, I don’t even have it’ and she was like ‘I’ve got it here – do you want to hear it?’ So she sent it to me.”

The unearthed recording gave her flashbacks to how she sounded as a young artist. “I still sound like me a little bit, but I'm very American,” she adds.

“I'm also very much trying to be Kate Nash at the same time. I'm trying to be so many different people. And I think that's just one thing that I've realised now, is that I'm very much myself now. There's more Northern in my voice now than ever when I'm performing.”

Not only has Charlotte embraced her background within her sound, but also in the visual storytelling around Seriously Love, Go Home. The EP cover features the hands of her mother, a hairdresser, washing Charlotte’s hair.

Cover of Seriously Love, Go Home. Credit: Stewart Baxter

“I've often been not that open with where I'm from or tried to be quite elusive because I thought that nobody needs to know everything, that it should just be about the music,” she admits. “And in reality, that's not actually who I am as a person. I'm very open, and I owe Blackburn a lot. I owe my mum a lot.”

Her vulnerability within her music isn’t performative; it’s always been a part of the songwriter’s life, she explains.

“I used to get shouted at for always writing very depressing songs when I was younger, I mean, I grew up with Leonard Cohen. That's been the blueprint of my childhood. I've also struggled with being very very very emotional, and as a teenager, that was really hard. My emotions would always get the better of me.”

Her music is sometimes more than just an outlet for the Blackburn artist; it can almost be like therapy.

Charlotte’s connection to her late father, originally from Ireland, is clear. She reflects on when she experienced dire homesickness in childhood, where she traced her finger around the bricks of her house as a way to “remember” the shape of it before leaving for a ‘Parents Get Lost’ camp. Her father later admitted that he used to do the same gesture as a child.

After revisiting this memory in a discussion with a colleague, Charlotte realised how much of an impact the recent selling of her family home had on her, and that the best way for her to process it was through her songwriting.

“And then from there these lyrics just fell out of me, it’s called 'Outlines' and it's honestly one of my most favourite songs I've ever written.”

“From the moment I got to that session, which was at midday, I didn't leave till 2:00 in the morning.” Her eyes glared widely.

“I wasn't crying for only one of those hours. The last time I cried like that was in therapy. I felt like it was a purge. It was nuts. The whole session that I had was just genuinely a bit life-changing. It was beautiful.”

Whether writing alone or with trusted collaborators like Dimitri Tikovoi on the EP's track 'Romeo', or 'Cider and Black' with Black Honey's Izzy Phillips, Charlotte OC has finally come home – musically, emotionally and literally. It seems that is precisely what she lays out with Seriously Love, Go Home; the sound of an artist finally listening to her own voice.

•Seriously Love, Go Home is out now