With a sound that joins childhood songwriting influences like Sheryl Crow and Grace Potter with later emo-pop inspirations, Charlotte Sands rose to fame in 2020 when she went viral with "Dress," a song about a highly publicized Harry Styles fashion cover shoot. The track was included on her debut EP, Special, in 2021. Sands' first Top Ten entry on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart came the following year in the form of "Loved You a Little," a collaboration with Taking Back Sunday and the Maine.

Massachusetts native Charlotte Sands left her home in Hopkinton at the age of 18 to make her way to Nashville, Tennessee. Finding a roommate from an ad, she planned to spend a year in Music City before attending the Berklee College of Music. She never made it to Boston, instead writing and recording songs on her own. Early releases like "Phantom Pain" and the self-conscious "Life of the Party" appeared in the late 2010s.

Sands' popularity exploded in late 2020, when she released "Dress," an uncharacteristically playful, synth bass-heavy track celebrating pop star Harry Styles' dress-clad photo shoot for Vogue magazine. The song eventually cracked the Top 40 of the Billboard Pop Airplay chart. She collected "Dress" and some of her prior singles on the debut EP Special in early 2021. A second EP, Love and Other Lies, followed in early 2022, a year that found Sands opening tours for the likes of My Chemical Romance, Yungblud, and the Maine. That May, she made her debut in the Top Ten of the Alternative Airplay chart with an appearance on the Maine track "Loved You a Little" alongside musical influence Taking Back Sunday. ~ Marcy Donelson