French-born artist Charlotte de Casabianca defines her musical journey with “Mercury Retrograde” a dream-pop single released on July 17, 2026. The track serves as the first single from Midnight Couture, a previous four-track EP. Marking her first musical release under her own name, the single represents not a debut in the conventional sense, but the culmination of years spent exploring music, performance, identity and personal transformation.
Raised in Paris and shaped by life across ten countries, de Casabianca eventually found herself in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2011. It was there that a fortune-teller encouraged her to connect more deeply with music, prompting her to take singing lessons and discover a voice she had never fully allowed herself to express. That experience led to the formation of Charlotte & The Barracudas, her jazz-cabaret group, which performed in Bogotá for several years.
Her creative career subsequently expanded into film, television and theatre. As an actress, she appeared in projects including Le Flic de Belleville, alongside Omar Sy, and took on the role of Roxie Hart in a Broadway-licensed production of the musical Chicago in Quito, Ecuador. She also shared the stage with electronic music duo WhoMadeWho at Medellín’s Ritvales electronic music festival, further broadening her artistic experience.
Alongside her work in entertainment, de Casabianca pursued astrology professionally, drawing on an interest inherited from her maternal grandmother. The longstanding practice informs the conceptual framework of “Mercury Retrograde,” a song that examines emotional repetition, romantic relapse and the complicated relationship between self-awareness and self-sabotage.
The single also emerges from a more personal period of change. For de Casabianca, motherhood became a profound turning point, challenging her sense of identity and prompting a gradual process of rediscovery. Rather than presenting motherhood as a simple narrative of fulfilment, Midnight Couture explores the disorientation that can accompany major life changes and the struggle to recognise oneself after a period of personal transformation.
Beneath its polished, cinematic surface, the project reflects an experience marked by uncertainty, vulnerability and renewal.
Musically, “Mercury Retrograde” unfolds at 90 beats per minute, combining electric piano, slow-moving electronic textures and a grounded vocal performance with an understated cinematic atmosphere. Its dream-pop foundation draws on a range of contemporary and alternative influences, with sonic reference points that include Charlotte Gainsbourg, Beach House and The 1975.
The track’s emotional directness also recalls the atmospheric intensity associated with London Grammar and the melancholic sensibility of Lana Del Rey, while maintaining its own focus on intimate storytelling.
Lyrically, the song centres on the familiar but often uncomfortable experience of returning to a relationship, a feeling or a pattern that one believed had been left behind. Its perspective is notably self-aware, balancing emotional vulnerability with a measure of irony. The narrator recognises the possibility of repeating past mistakes yet remains drawn towards them, capturing the tension between understanding one’s behaviour and finding the strength to change it.
The astrological concept behind the title reinforces this theme. “Mercury retrograde” is commonly associated in astrology with revisiting unfinished business, reconsidering past decisions and confronting matters thought to be resolved. De Casabianca uses that symbolism as a framework for examining love, memory and the emotional significance of returning to the past.
“Mercury Retrograde reveals what we hadn’t seen as we moved forward. In love stories and elsewhere, it is always the return that gives meaning to the departure. I don’t believe in a clean break. I believe in the final turn of the key,” says de Casabianca.
With “Mercury Retrograde” Charlotte de Casabianca introduces the emotional and sonic world of Midnight Couture, bringing together her varied artistic background, personal experiences and interest in astrology. The single offers a first glimpse of an EP that explores the fragile relationship between identity, desire and change, establishing a new creative chapter under her own name.
