Video: Charlie Hickey, ‘Nervous at Night’

Kevin Bronson on March 10th, 2022

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Charlie Hickey (Photo by Frank Ockenfels)

Singer-songwriter Charlie Hickey’s early work was rife with from-the-mouths-of-babes moments, as the teenage prodigy charted the emotional bumps and bruises of careening toward adulthood. Hickey is 21 now and reaching another milestone, the release of his debut album.

He announced today that the album, “Nervous at Night,” would be out May 20 via Saddest Factory Records, the label founded by singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, a childhood friend and frequent duet partner. The album was made with many of Bridgers’ collaborators, including producer Marshall Vore and fellow musicians Harrison Whitford, Christian Lee Hutson and Mason Stoops.

Hickey acknowledges the album has “a thread of growing up running through it, also transitioning into adulthood and having your inner child still be a very big part of you.” The title track, released today as the first single, captures much of that.

The sweetly melodic “Nervous at Night,” co-written with Vore and Cari Salimando, suggests that it’s not just Hickey’s tremulous voice that recalls Bright Eyes. Like Conor Oberst, it’s as if the young songwriter is holding forth from the middle of a centrifuge, fears and frailties swirling around him. Here, the South Pasadena native confesses that he’s physically and emotional adrift and wishes he could explain it all. “But I know wishes don’t exist / They’re just songs about lives that no one lives / You just want something till you stop wanting it,” he sings.

Says Hickey: “It captures a lot of the anxiety and beauty that comes with growing up and having new feelings. It’s a song about being nervous for no particular reason, which is a running theme on this album, and also one that I think a lot of people, particularly of my generation, can relate to.”

Zoe Donahoe and Adam Sputh directed the video for the song.

||| Watch: The video for “Nervous at Night”