Charlie Dore is one of the UK's most respected singer songwriters, being one of just a handful of UK writers to achieve success across many genres. While her own albums favour her more eclectic/roots leanings, the range of artists to record her songs is broad and includes Celine Dion, Tina Turner, George Harrison, Martha Wainright, Ricky Ross, Paul Carrack and Jimmy Nail. Along the way Charlie has notched up a UK No 1, a US No 4 plus Top Ten hits in America, Canada, Italy, Germany, France and Australia.
She has composed for three BBC drama series and three films; two series of BBC drama ‘Two Thousand Acres of Sky’ and the film ‘Roman Road’ (Zenith Filmsw). During this time she also collaborated with Simon Rogers, one half of underground dance group Slacker, to produce Space Country, a collection of ambient country music.
Her own hit, ‘Pilot of the Airwaves’ still features on Radio 2’s core playlist and remains a worldwide radio favourite.
Charlie started her career as an actor in rep. and spent several years working on Television and the London fringe. However music was never far away. She starred opposite Jonathan Pryce and Tim Curry in the award-winning film ‘The Ploughman's Lunch', worked in theatre, appeared in two shows with the iconic People Show company, several television dramas and radio with Eric Idle, plus her self written show, ‘Cybil’, a four part comedy for BBC Radio Scotland. She co-founded and performed at London comedy-impro venue The Hurricane Club for seven years, working alongside many comedy icons including Bill Bailey, Harry Hill and old friend Robin Williams who joined Charlie and the team onstage for their entire set.
In total Charlie has released 11 albums. The first with Island, second with Chrysalis before launching her own lable, Black Ink, which has released 9 of her albums plus five EPs.
Her songs have won two Ascap awards, an Ivor Novello nomination, both the Overall Grand and the Folk Prize from the International Acoustic Music Awards, Best Album Lyrics for ‘Cheapskate Lullabyes’, plus both Album of the Year & Best Lyrics for 2017’s ‘Dark Matter’ from the US Indy Acoustic Project, while her 2020 album, ‘Like Animals’ won her the FATEA 2020 Female Artist of the Year and a further Best Lyrics award from the US Indy Acoustic.
December 2021 saw the release of her first ever Christmas EP ‘The Man Who Built Christmas’, an entirely unconventional collection of songs, some of which she often includes in her touring sets on the basis that a good song isn’t just for Christmas. As a writer she has no rules although as a rule she enjoys working with writers who like to experiment and are happy to push the envelope.
In October 2025 she released an EP, 'Still Curious’ which features a long-lost song written by Elvis Costello in 1976 but never recorded until Charlie rediscovered his original demo on an ancient cassette, untouched for 40 years. She asked if she could record a new version and Elvis gave it his blessing. The other two tracks included are her own ‘Overdrawn At the Sleep Bank’ and ‘Slow Reveal’ co-written with Michele Stodart.
Charlie continus touring, songwriting and is currently aiming to finish her long promissed book, ‘Background Noise’.
