Johannesburg singer-songwriter Charlie Harris and his band Keep Guessing Charlie return with new single “Hey Now,” a song that began during the COVID lockdown in 2020 and explores the strange relationship between nostalgia, time and learning to appreciate the present before it becomes the past.

Written during a period when normal life had suddenly come to a standstill, “Hey Now” started with Charlie experimenting with a different way of playing guitar.“This was the first song where I really started trying out new picking techniques on the guitar,” Charlie explains. “There was something about the chord progression that immediately felt nostalgic to me. It made me long for those simpler days that somehow seemed to have slipped away, but as the song developed, that nostalgia began to mean something slightly different.

Against the backdrop of lockdown, when people everywhere were looking back at the lives they had temporarily lost, Charlie realised how easy it is to romanticise yesterday while allowing today to pass unnoticed.“The song started out making me think about the past, but it also became a reminder not to let the present slip away. We spend so much time wishing we could go back to certain moments without realising that what we’re living right now will one day be something we look back on too.”

It is a theme that has increasingly found its way into Charlie’s songwriting. Songs such as “Yesteryear” looked back at family, friendship and the memories that remain long after particular moments have passed, while “All I Have Is Now” explored the importance of being present. “Hey Now” sits somewhere between those two ideas — missing yesterday while reminding yourself to pay attention to today.

Musically, the song also marks an important point in Charlie’s development as a guitarist. The picking style he was experimenting with in 2020 gives “Hey Now” a more reflective feel, allowing the guitar to carry much of the song’s sense of memory and movement.

Charlie Harris has steadily built a catalogue around songs that often begin with very personal thoughts but ultimately deal with experiences most people recognise. Recent releases with Keep Guessing Charlie have included “I Don’t Want It,” about finally walking away from destructive relationships, and “Loved & Lost,” an upbeat reflection on the repeated cycle of falling in love, losing it and somehow finding the courage to try again.

With two Digital Dust albums, The Greatest EP Ever and a growing collection of singles behind them, Keep Guessing Charlie continue to develop a sound that moves between folk, indie and rock without losing the straightforward songwriting at its centre.

Six years after it was first written during one of the strangest periods in recent history, “Hey Now” finally gets its moment, and perhaps its message makes even more sense now than it did in 2020: it’s fine to miss yesterday — just don’t become so busy looking backwards that today slips away too.