As befits emo pop, Charlotte Sands pours her heart out on SATELLITE. The content is – typical of the genre – about love, heartbreak and coming to terms with yourself. Topics that have already been sung about a million times, but which will never get old as long as we continue to find new words for them.
Unfortunately, the 29-year-old from Massachusetts doesn’t always succeed. The line between raw emotion and unspeakable kitsch is thin and Sands has apparently not yet perfected the balancing act between the two. While in songs like “One Eye Open” she stylishly chooses the right images to describe her toxic relationship, on the ballad “After life” she reaches so deeply into the box of phrases that it hurts. On her new album she dares to venture into areas that are less forgiving than the pop punk of her previous record.
While on “Neckdeep” you can lose yourself enough in the hard electric guitars and the strong synth melody to deliberately ignore lines like “I’m only dead inside”, the more acoustic “Sunday” makes it impossible to miss clichéd lines like “I only like myself when I’m with you”. The hard songs that invite you to the emo dance floor are the highlights of the album, while the numerous ballads invite you to skip.
This review appears in Musikexpress 4/2026.
