Three years ago, Cap Carter thought his music career was over. The Manila-born, western Sydney-raised R&B artist had released an EP through a major label but was told he wasn’t recouping profits fast enough. His label gave him two options: another EP on a shoestring budget, or to part ways.
Carter chose the latter, splitting with his manager at the same time. “That was scary,” he recalls. “After that major label, big-budget life, you’re literally left thinking ‘that’s probably the end of my music career now’. It just feels like this big X on your name.”
On what was intended as a farewell tour of sorts, Carter began putting on DIY shows to thank the fans who had supported him. Airbnbs and underground car parks became his concert venues. “It got to a point where 100 or 200 people were coming to these car parks … and it just felt like it wasn’t the end,” he says.
At the same time, Carter was growing an audience online. He had long resisted his label’s suggestion to promote himself via TikTok but, when he went independent, he decided to give it a shot, sending the DM that would kickstart the second phase of his career.
Carter reached out to rising US pop star Teddy Swims – nominated for best new artist at the Grammys this year – to ask if he could be Swims’ support act on an Australian tour. Swims was already following Carter on TikTok and said yes. Carter eventually opened for Swims in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland in late 2022. “Everything after that was sold-out tours in the US, sold-out tours in Australia and the UK. It blew up.”
Half a million TikTok followers later, Carter is about to release his debut album, Streetlights. His 2021 EP, Notes, was written while he was on suicide watch in rehab for addiction, tracing stories of his broken childhood in a church that never felt like home. Streetlights comes from a different place, one of healing and hope.
“Back in the day, playing around in Mount Druitt as a kid, whenever those street lights came on, it was pretty much mum’s way of saying, ‘You need to get your ass home’,” he says. “It’s a nod to a coming home to safety, a coming home to self. The last EP was chaotic – I was barely hanging on with life. Now, I’m coming home.”
The album opens with a spoken-word passage, immediately fostering a sense of intimacy. Sung, Carter’s dexterous voice – recorded sometimes in just one take – leaps from a soulful, smooth croon to something more raw and anthemic over a bed of crisply produced R&B-inflected pop. On Openwater, wordless vocals are lushly layered – Carter becomes another instrument to accompany himself singing.
Lyrically, the album communicates a sense of optimism alongside unflinching honesty about the pains of the past. These songs express and encourage the importance of showing up for yourself and your loved ones after hardship – because, as Carter sings on the album’s opening track, “Maybe there’s still honour in that”.
The light and shade that colours the album is evident on the closing track, Killing, where Carter peels back the glamour of his artistic success to show that recovery is an ongoing process: “I sold out New York City, thought this dream would make me happy / But I’m crying on the hotel floor.”
Going independent, Carter says, has afforded him space to reflect on his own progress without the pressure to retread his trauma: “In major label world, if it’s making money, don’t change the formula. Keep writing sad shit. Keep writing the shit about addiction and drugs … For me, it would be conflicting with my recovery to continue to glorify what happened in yesteryear, when I’m trying to [move] forward.”
Carter is about to embark on a tour across Australia’s east coast. These will be his last shows on home turf for the foreseeable future as he turns his focus to the international market – particularly the US, where most of his listeners live.
But he intends to leave a lasting mark at these shows. To honour the community spirit that drives his work, Carter is introducing an initiative called Holding Space, in which solo ticketholders can meet up to enjoy the gig together. The idea was born after reading a comment from a fan who was in addiction recovery and didn’t have anyone to go with – so they didn’t go at all. “It just broke my heart hearing that,” Carter says.
Carter estimates that 50 to 100 fans in each city have signed up for Holding Space. It’s no surprise; he’s seen first-hand the rapport that his fans have with one another, from those car park shows to venues 10 times bigger. “There is a community amongst them that I don’t necessarily need to facilitate … supporting each other in recovery, supporting each other in real life,” he says. “[In the UK] there were strangers offering each other lifts to the shows and lifts home.”
This career, and this life, once felt like a distant dream for the little boy from Mount Druitt pictured on the album’s cover. “Five-year-old me would be saying, ‘Really, we did that?’” Carter says. “It’d be like telling me that we eventually went to Disneyland.”
Cap Carter is performing at 170 Russell, Melbourne, on 10 October, the Metro theatre, Sydney, on 18 October, and the Triffid, Brisbane, on 25 October. His album, Streetlights, is out 14 November
