The Y Factor... Charlton
Hill
(The Sunday Telegraph - Sunday Magazine, June '03)
If you're going to be a marketable singer/songwriter it can't hurt to look like Charlton Hill. He cuts a striking figure: tall, with perfectly-in-place features, penetrating dark green eyes and thick black hair that has been over-styled to look not styled.
The sophisticated production atmosphere of Hill's melodic singles, Two's Company and Deep, have already opened the door to commercial radio and top-20 chart positions. The 27-year-old admits that treading the line between singer/songwriter credibility and blatant pop star hasn't been simple. "On one hand, you don't want to have your head so far up your own arse that you don't do the things you know will get your music heard, but on the other hand you're constantly asking yourself, 'Is this going to do more harm than good'."
While Hill doesn't describe a guest appearance on Channel Seven's Surprise Chef as a career highlight, he recognises there are few performance opportunities available for artists on prime-time television. "While part of you is thinking that this show has nothing to do with music, there's also an awareness that at least you're exposing your music to people who otherwise may never hear it."
Avoiding the cliche has been a theme in Hill's career. At 15 he did a 10-month stint on Home and Away and was offered a lucrative threee-year contract to continue as one of the show's central charachters. He turned it down. "I knew I'd be better off going back to school and working away on my music," he says.
It wasn't that soapie fame didn't have its advantages - "all of a sudden, instead of having to approach girls, they actually came up to you. It was mind blowing" - but even at 16, Hill had other priorities. Apart from being a keen surfer, he was playing bass in a band and wanted to pursue his academic bent, eventually graduating from the University of New South Wales with an economics degree.
Hill's debut album Waterline tracks the years he spent trying to break in to the London music scene and the relationships he had while doing it. "From 16 to 22 I was in a relationship, but when I first went to Europe I was always on the move and in the end I had quite a few experiences to draw from," he says. They became songs, some of which have been used in scenes on TV's The Secret Life of Us and Charmed.
So, what does Hill think about the onslaught of female singer/songwriters? "I think it's great that women are getting a stronger and stronger voice in this industry," he says enthusiastically, "particularly because it's across all the musical genres and not just pop. Music should represent every demographic."
Does he think there's less pressure on women to be cool? "They probably have a lot more room to move as far as their image and appearance is concerned," he says cautiously. "Female singers are almost expected to constantly re-invent themselves so if a girl wants to have red hair for a couple of months no one really blinks an eye, that's just so and so going through a red hair stage. If a guy does it, it's more liekly to be 'Check out this tosser!'"
- Angela Pulvirenti