British folk-pop singer/songwriter Charlie Winston Kicks Off Tour 

Submitted by Recordworld

As I Am is Charlie Winston’s 5th album.

“The album title, As I Am, has the value of a mantra. It’s a way of reminding myself of who I am now and that letting go doesn’t mean giving up” says the man who caused a sensation in 2009 with the hit Like A Hobo, revealing a strong folk and rock musical identity.  As I Am will be equally groundbreaking with its association with French superstar and hitmaker Vianney. The songs of As I Am emerge from that beautiful collaboration, recorded together in Vianney’s Parisian home studio.

One of the album’s most representative songs is Exile, where Charlie settles the internal debate that has agitated him for a long time about being an English artist popular mostly in Europe.”

A poignant and universal song. Check out Exile video here:  https://youtu.be/C8M8uMcxS

Winston is a British folk-pop singer/songwriter who recorded for Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records before breaking through to mainstream success in France in 2009 with the chart-topping smash hit “Like a Hobo,” from his multi platinum-selling second album, Hobo. Subsequent albums like 2011’s Running Still and 2015’s Curio City continued to fare well in France and Belgium, where he became a chart staple. Charlie Winston’s latest As I am, produced by the French star and hitmaker Vianney and mixed by Mark “Spike” Stent (Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Muse) garnered him over a half-million listeners on Spotify ands countless more across social media.

We live in a world of algorithms. They surround us, essential to modern everyday life. They are designed to understand who we are, our desires, interested and needs. They learn our behaviour in more detail than we can imagine. Each algorithm is unique to the individual, and every interaction is a more personal experience than the last. 

Imagine if all human relationships were like that. 

How good it feels when someone wants to know everything about you. Like falling in love. You want to share your deepest secrets, entrusting to them your most intimate details. Because it feels good. Really good. And to avoid losing that feeling, the heart reaches out for more with each moment that passes, (just as we reach for the phone in those quiet moments). Other relationships fade into the background. They don’t feed us in the same way. 

But what happens when all of our quieter moments are filled with the need for that connection? And what happens when the interests of those to whom we hand over our data are not the same as ours. To share is to be vulnerable. How vulnerable are we when paying less attention to real relationships and more to virtual ones. 

Algorithm talks about the dangers of the loneliness we face, when behaving in the interests of algorithms. It is written as a metaphor of a co-dependant, or toxic relationship that constantly promises to fill the hole, while only making it bigger. 

Musically, the vocal melody deliberately dances around the same four chords for the entire song, invoking the relationship between programmed AI and human imperfection. Just as an algorithm builds upon a template of the individual, so does the song build in emotional, arriving at a unexpected crescendo. The twist is in the fact that the song’s narrator is the algorithm, which reminds us of the ever decreasing gap between humanity and AI. 

Algorithm is the first song from upcoming album “As I am” produced in Paris by French star and hitmaker Vianney and mixed by Mark “Spike” Stent (Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Muse…).