More about: Anna of the north

What I’m really enjoying about my twenties is reclaiming my girlhood – especially with pop music, which I spent my teenage years thinking I was too cool for. But no one is cooler than a pop girl, which is where I find my soft spot for Anna of the North, who makes funky love songs with the catchiest lyrics. 

Crazy Life is, from start to finish, an album comprised of songs which confess her love for one specific person, with lines like ‘I don’t need nobody if it’s not you’ solidifying this mood of undying admiration. As touching as this is, it’s not my usual type of love song – it feels slightly like a reliance on one person to give Anna a hope for her life, and that makes me sad, as lovely as love is. To be a successful woman and your songs still rely on a sort of dependency on your partner is a derivation from her previous albums which seem to view love as an addition to relying on yourself to experience life to its fullest; it’s not a requirement, but a nice extra to share your time with. 

Alternatively, one could look at this album as Anna finding hope in this figure she sings to, as she finds the hope and love that life has promised her as a result of their presence. ‘Living Life Right’ is about societal pressure to fulfil your life a certain way, and feeling like a failure for not living up to expectations. The idea of trying your hardest to still feel incomplete is a real issue in today’s society, especially pressures to settle down in a relationship, so Anna’s confrontation of these head on is a different form of empowerment – one that defies these social standards which tend to lay in the music sphere. 

This is not to say that Anna’s third album is bad – it’s far from it. There’s a gorgeous mix of modern love and traditional love: ‘Listen’, track four on the album, does this brilliantly. You can hear the synthesiser tones in the song, but the lyrics are almost that of a ballad, which creates a modern take on a more established form of love songs. As she establishes her sound within herself, Anna is setting up for a new kind of love song to enter the market: one which doesn’t shy from professing herself as truly in love with no bells on, just pure passion at being in a relationship. 

I think my standout has to be ‘Meteorite’ which features Gus Dapperton. Their voices blend so beautifully together and make for the most perfect harmonies – they really encapsulate what being in love feels like, and the beauty of working together in a duo to improve something which was already on its way to being brilliant and complete: adding a bit more to make it extra special. 

Crazy Life is out November 4th.

Grab your copy of the Gigwise print magazine here.

More about: Anna of the north