Hi, I’m Charlene. Nice to meet you.
A little bit about me…
I’m an Orange County-based artist who is discovering her path in the world of music. I fell in love with singing when I was a teenager, focused primarily on singing worship music in church. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I permanently moved to Orange County in 2012 with hopes to be closer to the Southern California sunshine and the entertainment hub that is Los Angeles. Outside of my growing singing career, I have spent most of my career working in marketing and graphic design. I’m married to my goofy, lovable husband Chris, and we are major foodies who love watching Netflix together and volunteering at church. Oh yeah, and I also am pretty fluent in Spanish and Korean.
How I started getting interested in music
Music wasn’t seriously on my radar at all until I was in my mid-teens, but even then I struggled internally for years figuring out if I had any talent to pursue singing as more than a hobby. My first foray into music was playing the flute in the school band, but the flute never really made sense or spoke to me in the way that singing ever did. I was encouraged to pursue subjects other than music, and I didn’t have much of a desire for pursuing music or singing anyway.
But everything changed when I was about fifteen years old, which is when I remember falling in love with church worship music and felt a God-given nudging in my heart to sing worship music skillfully. Oddly enough, God sometimes gives us desires that don’t match our current level of ability. Looking back I can admit I wasn’t a very skilled singer when I first started; in fact I remember my own mother telling me I was never meant to be a singer when I was young. And I don’t blame her - I sounded average at best and sang off-key more than I’d like to admit. But when I started singing worship music, in spite of my lack of skill, music finally made sense to me in a way that years in the school band never did. And I fell head over heels in love with the craft of singing. I’ve been singing ever since, and nothing brings joy to my heart quite like singing does - especially singing live.
How I started my recording artist journey
The very first time I ever recorded music was when I was 17 years old. I had entered a Christian vocal competition and made to the finals. The top 12 finalists were each required to record a song which would then be performed live at the event finals in front of a large audience. I remember how challenging it was to learn the art of recording for the first time, but I also recall making some of the most memorable memories of my teenage life through that experience.
For years I didn’t record anything else until 2015, which is when I finally saved up enough money to record an EP of original worship songs at a local recording studio as a passion project. I saw this largely as a passion project and only uploaded some of the songs from the project to Soundcloud.
Five years later and in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic I’ve finally found the time to record again, and this time I’ve teamed up with an incredible producer and independent record label, Grant Sonn Productions, for the recording and promotion of my first commercial dance music project! I can’t wait to share this project with the world early spring 2021. Until then, I’ll be releasing some exciting new singles every 1-2 months leading up to the album release with Grant Sonn Productions UK. I’ll save the juicy details of these songs for future posts.
If you’ve made it this far into the blog post, thank you!
In the meantime, let me know if there is anything you wish to know about me or my musical background. Send me a DM or leave a comment on any of my socials. I hope this blog can be a place where I can share more about myself and my creative inspiration as an artist in the months ahead!
