Caroline Romano is an artist who is always chasing the impossible. For some singers, this might mean big dreams, and Caroline certainly has those, but she’s after impossible moments, scenarios and situations that she can’t experience. Her latest adventure into daydreamed nostalgia is her single “Ireland in 2009.” We just had to pick Caroline’s brain about the song, her process, and what she might be imagining next.
“Music has always been, at least for as long as I can remember, the way I’ve communicated,” Caroline told us, sharing that songwriting in some form has been part of her life from the start. “I think it will be my vice for the rest of my life (in the best way).” A pop-punk/pop-rock sounds is where Caroline feels most at home. She calls it “unnecessarily overdramatic” and “over the top” which she says matches her tendency for big feelings. “I don’t feel anything lightly, and I don’t want my music to either.”
Following in the footsteps of artists like Queen, Taylor Swift, YUNGBLUD, Noah Kahan, My Chemical Romance, Jon Bellion, and even Bo Burnham, (“They all have the incredible gift of being unique yet completely and universally relatable in everything they write.”) Caroline’s goal is to create music that makes people feel something, and she’s feeling it, too. She told us that she often finds inspiration for her songs by observing people. “I like to notice a little thing about someone, like the way a stranger walks with his hands in his pockets down the street, and turn that into something. I find storytelling incredibly easy when you just pick one small thing to write about. You can spin it into the prettiest thing.”
Caroline’s latest single “Ireland in 2009” took this approach with inspiration from the film Cherrybomb (2009). The film tells the story of a love triangle between three reckless teenagers in Ireland in, you guessed it, 2009. Things don’t go the best for the characters, but Caroline latched onto the small pieces. What would it be like to be a teenager in Ireland in 2009? To fall into a reckless kind of love that might not work out?
“I’ve yet to be able to explain what it is about Cherrybomb that is so intriguing to me. I haven’t totally figured it out myself yet, but I just fell in love with the look of the movie,” Caroline said. Caroline told us that she loved the movie’s “cool blue tone” and “common theme of red being the standout color in certain shots.” “I loved the recklessness of it, the fashion, the overarching story of it being a gritty, modern version of a Shakespeare play.” Caroline imagines that the people in the love story she created from this were background characters in Cherrybomb, trying their own luck in Belfast, “emo kids falling in love in a parking lot.”
Recently 20, Caroline was not a teenager in 2009, but she loves the impossible. “I think I loved [the story] because it was a completely different version of life than I’ve ever experienced. It was this completely carefree, youthful, pretty, ugly thing that looked a lot different than anything I’ve ever known,” she said. With her music and her imaginings, Caroline is after a taste of these impossible moments, “what ifs” written into her lyrics. “It’s kind of lame, but I do get really sad thinking about all the different versions of life I’ll miss out on,” she told us. “The fact that I can’t live every story out there myself, all the people I won’t meet all the places I won’t see. It’s kind of devastating to me. I want to live as much as I can, and if I could, I’d live almost every version of life out there. There’s just not enough time though, and I can’t meet every person in the world. I can’t be a teenager in Ireland in 2009. Sometimes, writing about it, even if it’s only in my head or from a movie, eases that ache.”
We asked Caroline if she was in the process of imagining more impossible scenarios, “Haha, always!” She shared that she’s working on “an album’s worth of impossible scenarios.” She’s excited to share a lot more music in early 2022. “To craft one long narrative, a sort of ‘Chapter One’ in my career, has been a goal of mine for a long time, and I can’t wait for it to be out.” She’s also determined to go on tour. Fingers crossed we get to experience Caroline’s music in person very soon!
