POLACHEK
Caroline

• 1. Early life

Caroline Elizabeth Polachek is an American singer and songwriter. Raised in Connecticut, Polachek co-founded the indie pop band Chairlift while studying at the University of Colorado. The duo emerged from the late-2000s Brooklyn music scene with the sleeper hit "Bruises".

During her time in the band, she worked on the solo projects Ramona Lisa and CEP before embarking on a career under her own name after Chairlift's disbandment in 2017. Her debut studio album, Pang (2019), featured collaborations with producer Danny L Harle and was released to critical acclaim.

Polachek has worked extensively with other artists, collaborating with Blood Orange, Fischerspooner, Sbtrkt, Charli XCX, and the British music collective PC Music, and penning material for Beyoncé ("No Angel") and Travis Scott.

Early life

Polachek was born in Manhattan, New York City on June 20, 1985 to James Montel Polachek (1944-2020), a financial markets analyst and trained classical musician, and Elizabeth Allan. Her great-grandfather Arthur Polachek was a Jewish confectioner from the Slovak village Lastomír. Her family relocated to Tokyo, Japan, where she lived between the ages of one and six, and later settled in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Polachek started singing choir in the third grade. She was a synth player from a young age as her father gifted her a Yamaha keyboard to dissuade her from being disruptive on the piano. Her parents divorced in 1994.

Polachek recounts her early exposure to traditional Japanese songs and anime themes as being influential on her musical education: "Japanese singing is a lot of minor and pentatonic, with really angular melodies that I think really stuck in my subconscious." She rode horses growing up: "I learned a lot about rhythm and about voice from that. Like, you don't always have full control of your instrument. You have to trust it, you have to give it space, you have to know when to push, give it air." As a "hyperactive kid", her divorced parents would play Enya at their houses in order to calm her senses.

As a teenager, Polachek began traveling to New York to attend concerts, which were a mix of post-hardcore emo, DIY punk and jazz shows. Mike Patton once personally walked her into a show at the Knitting Factory when her fake ID was rejected. She played in a couple of bands in high school and college.