Bastian Baker about "Charlie from Sydney":

"Let me talk today about the song "Charlie From Sydney"...

I was sitting comfortably in an airport lounge in Milan when I started writing this description for the lyrics. My airplane that was supposed to take me from Lugano to Zurich ended up being late enough that I would miss my connection to San Francisco. So, I found myself having to go alone from Milan-Munich-San Francisco. It was going to be a tiring trip, except that for once, it was supposed to be for vacation.

It’s rather often that the seed for a new idea of a song comes to me under these circumstances, and this time was no different. “Charlie from Sydney” was born in transit. I had just spent a couple of days in Vegas with two friends. We visited my friend Shania Twain, who was performing her final shows at Ceasar’s Palace. We partied a lot, and I know that’s an understatement when we’re talking about the city of games.

On our way back home, we were relaxing in the airport lounge, still a bit drunk, with a beer in hand and a silly, satisfied grin on our faces. I remember reflecting on the past few days that had flown by. At that moment, I felt a great gratitude for my life and how fantastic I have it. I was floating in bliss, certainly still a bit tipsy, but fully appreciating the marvels that the world has to offer.

I looked around the lounge and noticed that everyone’s full attention was fixed on the television screens. The gravity of the room shocked me.

On the screen, an anchorman reported that the terrorist organization ISIS had just infiltrated Lindt Café in Sydney, and that they were holding the customers and staff hostage. The news came as a sharp buzz kill. I helplessly watched as these poor, helpless people who hadn’t asked for anything from anyone were perhaps facing their final hours of life. What a tragedy..

I wrote the first verse and chorus and I felt my eyes tear up. They were at the wrong place, at the wrong time: nothing more than that. The siege unfortunately ended with a few of the hostages being killed. What a sad Sunday. My powerlessness in the whole thing took my words away.

At the beginning of January, I went on vacation to Iceland for three days. If someday you feel surrounded and smothered by people, I recommend going to this magnificently uninhabited and undeveloped place. When I got back to my hotel room in Reykjavik on my final night, I found the lyrics that I had started writing a few weeks earlier in Vegas. I started humming a couple more ideas and I eventually found the chorus melody. It sounded like an angry hymn, like a chorus meant to be sung together in outrage, in desire to change things. I kept humming, and the melody stuck in my head, but the song wasn’t yet complete.

Just at that moment, my travel partner Maude rushed to my room and spoke words that instantly froze my blood: “Did you see what happened in France? They attacked Charlie Hebdo, and there are a number of people dead”. Horrible.

I learned more of the facts about what had happened when I got back home. I couldn’t understand much Icelandic, so the local news didn’t really bring me much useful information. I also felt partially protected in a country where the national police have only had to use weapons a single time since its formation in order to fight an attack from someone firing out of their window into the crowd. Anyhow, I wrote the second verse as soon as I learned what happened in France. The title became a mixture of the two attacks that inspired the lyrics of the song: “Charlie from Sydney”. It was an effort to symbolize the international and impersonal character of these sickening events.

People often ask me if it’s a politically motivated song, and I don’t really think so. I simply try to bring an emotional and humane dimension to the drama that we all lived through, each in his or her own way. I also highlight the insignificance of our personal problems with respect to such atrocious events, noting that that our small problems are often easily solved if we put things in perspective."

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