Every Detail of Sage Charmaine's "Can't Keep Calling Me"

Sage Charmaine exudes a bold “do whatever you want” energy that screams “freedom” in an age of labels, categorization and segmentation. Her latest playful single, "Can’t Keep Calling Me," is a testament to her artistic vision and authenticity where everyday life experiences are transformed into lyrical narratives. While its storyline may appear straightforward, I caught up with Sage to talk "beyond the surface" about its meaning.

Miriam Boulos: Congrats on your release “Can’t Keep Calling Me”, what inspired you to write this one? How did it come together?

Sage Charmaine: Well, honestly, most of the songs I’ve been releasing for the past year, I actually started to write them about three years ago now, which is crazy. And then, you know, it kinda snowballed into being finished. I’m signed with this independent record label called Tag, so it’s been trial and error figuring out branding and stuff, so it's been kept in the pocket for a while. But yeah, when I wrote it, it was three years ago, and I was kind of in a place of…well, I’m still with this person. I just moved in with my high school sweetheart, so there was a time, because we had grown up together and gone through high school, it’s hard when you’re in your first relationship. There could be a lot of isolation, and it's hard to set boundaries; you’re young anyway and you don’t really know what the heck you’re doing to navigate through a serious relationship.

“Can't Keep Calling Me” was about, you know, ‘you want every detail,’ ‘put me on voice mail,’ were some of the lyrics, you know just being way too much and not giving the other person space. It’s about kinda having these tumultuous emotions come about knowing you love each other but you’re annoyed with each other. It's hard to navigate when you're trying to keep somebody else to yourself and stuff like that. So I’ve kinda added some exaggerations in the story, but that was the general premise of how this song came about. I write mostly from real-life experience. I write all my music myself. I’ve always loved Johnny Cash; again, I'm from the South. I’ve always really liked good storytelling through music. He did as well write through somebody else's experiences and mixing yours and somebody else's. So a little bit of that too, matching it up together, and there’s your story!

MB: What’s the meaning behind “Can’t Keep Calling Me”, beyond just being a song about reclaiming your power and drawing your boundaries ? Is there a take-away you’d like to convey to the listeners?

SC: One of my favorite lyrics from the song is “All I want is tranquility, but I'm not gonna get that when you’re with me” because I think that’s what it’s about too, holding on to something. Luckily, in my case, it ended up well. If you can’t work it out, then you need to know when to walk away from something that is not serving you or vice versa and get yourself into a good headspace. If you’re in a relationship or doing something that is just constantly pulling you down, then I think you should have enough discernment and be strong enough and confident enough to be like ‘you know what, this is not for me, I’ve tried my best, if the other party does not wanna try, I need to walk away from this’. Having discernment from things that are not serving you. Know your worth, love yourself, and if the person is not riding that wave then…

MB: The production of the song has a quite trip-hop dynamic and is pretty laid back and engaging. Could you shed some light on the creative process behind blending the various musical elements to match the song's theme and message?

SC: Most of the song, I created with this group called The Fund. They’re a band but also a production group, like two brothers and their best friend from like forever! They’re really cool; they really get my vision really well. So I usually just tell them, “Hey, I’m feeling this vibe today. Like if it was probably raining outside or some stuff like I want some more mellow, vibe, stuff like that. I incorporated a lot of glitter sounds for this one. I want kind of like some girly-pop-esque but more kind of sad, not super sad, but I love it more dark, I guess I should say. It really depends on the day. I go and be like “this is how I feel today” and we go together and kinda brainstorm. So definitely there’s a lot of glitter sounds I liked to add. Yeah, I like a good, medium to slow tempo song. I think I always fall into doing that.

MB: You really have this diversity when it comes to your sounds. How did you decide on the sound and style for this song? Were there any musical influences that played a role?

SC: I’m sure there were. Now, I don’t remember exactly. I have this other song called “Around,” which is five or six years old now, but I did some rap-centric, rap singing stuff in the past. Honestly, a good reference, not her now, but old Doja. I was super into that around 2020. You know her spacey album. I always liked singing rap so you can talk a lot more, but there’s still some melodic aspects to it. Yeah, that was a big inspo at the time. I had done a rap song in the past, with bad b**** vibes. I wanna try this again but I wanna do more of a singing almost like Lil Peep but girly-pop thing, you know, just like melodic rapping.

MB: Your approach to cover art for this single looks quite hands-on. Could you tell us more about the inspiration behind the specific numerical elements and symbols you incorporated into this artwork?

SC: I doodle on them sometimes. I did not have a printer at this time with the moving, so I traced out where my face is and doodled around it and put a lot of the lyrics and general stuff that I feel goes along with it. This one, I put a lot of numericals, numbers, and whatnot. I filmed the process, but if I wasn’t moving I would’ve done it a little bit more cool.

MB: Does "Can’t Keep Calling Me" signify a particular direction or theme in your musical journey that will carry over into your future projects?

SC: Honestly, I'm kind of into everything. I try all kinds of different music; I feel like I'm not stuck in one aspect, so totally I'll definitely try the rap-centric melodic thing again. I like it. I think it's an easy way to get a lot more feelings across because you don't have to be so tied down to a melody and a verse or whatever and a certain amount of bars, so you have a lot more time to say stuff. I really like that. I’ll definitely be making some more in the future. But, really right now, I write all the time so I have a couple more from this past bunch that I said I made a couple of years ago that are just coming out now. I've been making a lot of music on the side. I feel like some of it, yeah, but I feel like I've always been into alt-pop, so I think that’s a good umbrella term. I’ve grown a lot with my writing and so it kinda goes emo-pop but kinda more a little bit more pop it's kinda been going that way. I’ve even made this one ukulele song. I've been doing acoustic stuff which I’ve never really done before. I’ve got one song out called “Birthday Alone” that’s kinda like that with Grimes vibes which is what I was going for with that one. Just a little bit of everything really, that’s what's to be expected! ALL KINDS OF STUFF! My family, as I said, being from the south, they were like “You should make some country music!” [Chuckles]. Kacey Musgraves who does country-pop, you know who she is? right? I’d love to do something like that. I’d like to dabble with a little bit of everything so who knows what I'm gonna do?