FEATURE: Spotlight: Annabelle Dinda

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Annabelle Dinda

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THE brilliant…

Some Things Never Leave is the latest album from Annabelle Dinda. Born in Pennsylvania, Some Things Never Leave is her fourth studio album. I will end with a review of it. I am starting out with some interviews. Ones to Watch spoke with Dinda to discuss her album, “how she approaches her music after going viral on TikTok, and DIY-ing her album cover”:

“We are here to talk about the album, but I want to talk about “The Hand” first. What was it like for you when you posted it, and then all of a sudden it was this giant viral moment?

It was nuts, it was crazy. As much as when you’re posting you’re always going “Well who knows...” when it happens, especially at that volume, even when I was saying who knows what could happen, I really didn’t think that anyone was knowing that this was going to happen. It was crazy, it was a real mix of emotions, it was so exciting, and still is exciting in a belated sense. It’s such an incredible privilege to make anything that that amount of people are vibing with. I’m still rolling on that high, honestly.

Did “The Hand” going super viral impact your approach towards releasing music? Were you nervous to release your next thing after that?

No. If anything, I was more fueled. So far, I’ve gotten the feeling that because there is demand, I will supply, I think that’s fun. I really was excited to get more music out quickly, and I am continually excited to get more music out. Not in a way that’s crazy and not honoring the music that came before, but I love making music, and I’m so eager to do as much of it as anyone will let me do. Who knows, in five years, if I’m still lucky enough to do this, then maybe I’ll be kind of like, “I don’t know what to say to these people that are watching me,” but right now I’m like, “Listen to me! I got things to say!”

I love that. You mentioned that the title came very late in the recording process. What was it like choosing the title? Did it hit you all of a sudden?

We had been workshopping titles, and by that I mean I would come into the studio like “What about this one?” and they’d be like “Yeah…” I’m not a titler. I think some people start with a title, they start with the concept, and this was very much like “I don’t know.” But like anything that is named properly, it did come. Once I said it, I was like “Oh!” and everyone I said it to they were like “Oh!” and that’s how you know. When enough people say it in that little sassy voice.

Did “The Hand” going super viral impact your approach towards releasing music? Were you nervous to release your next thing after that?

No. If anything, I was more fueled. So far, I’ve gotten the feeling that because there is demand, I will supply, I think that’s fun. I really was excited to get more music out quickly, and I am continually excited to get more music out. Not in a way that’s crazy and not honoring the music that came before, but I love making music, and I’m so eager to do as much of it as anyone will let me do. Who knows, in five years, if I’m still lucky enough to do this, then maybe I’ll be kind of like, “I don’t know what to say to these people that are watching me,” but right now I’m like, “Listen to me! I got things to say!”

I love that. You mentioned that the title came very late in the recording process. What was it like choosing the title? Did it hit you all of a sudden?

We had been workshopping titles, and by that I mean I would come into the studio like “What about this one?” and they’d be like “Yeah…” I’m not a titler. I think some people start with a title, they start with the concept, and this was very much like “I don’t know.” But like anything that is named properly, it did come. Once I said it, I was like “Oh!” and everyone I said it to they were like “Oh!” and that’s how you know. When enough people say it in that little sassy voice.

I wanted to make sure we talk about the album cover. I had seen one of your TikToks, where it looked like you might have been physically crafting the album cover. Did you kind of arts and crafts the album cover yourself?

Yes! One of my very best friends, Lia, who does all of my pictures and visual stuff with me, we made that. We went to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and we took hundreds of photos, and we wanted to do this crowded cover. We cut out all these pictures and laid them out. I liked the idea of seeing the actual, physical pictures over the base photo. We ended up taking a lot of them out and keeping it pretty simple because, like everything, once it’s a little edited, it’s better. But yeah, we took the pictures, printed them, scanned them, it was really fun!”.

I want to bring in this interview from CLASH They spoke with Annabelle Dinda, among other things, the viral success of The Hand. It is a song that “held up a mirror to our humble humanity and supplied words for the grief we didn’t even know was fermenting within”:

“Which artists planted your musical seeds?

AD: My answer to this question sucks. I’ve been asked this a couple times and it’s so bad because I want to be the cool kind of person but Frank Sinatra was what my mom played in the car. A lot of Broadway, Stevie Wonder. Wonderful artists, just not what I sound like at all musically.

There’s certainly a through-line there when it comes to being narrative-centric. When building out your songs, do you feel like you’re pulling from inward or are you being influenced externally?

AD: I write a lot and not enough happens to me to support the amount that I write. During certain periods of time in my life I’ve written a lot because I’ve been feeling a lot, but I kind of always write a lot even when I’m not feeling a lot. In those moments I’ll pull from other things, like I did a lot of prompts on TikTok where I was just like “You guys tell me what to write about,” and that’s fun.

Every album I’ve done has a song or songs about my friends, oftentimes they’re named after my friends’ names. I really like to pull from other people’s lives. What naturally kind of happens is as I’m writing about someone else, because I am a mere animal person, I end up writing about myself a little bit too because you only have your own perspective.

You mentioned that you made ‘Some Things Never Leave’ during the fall, which it very much feels like seasonally. What was your mindset when making this album?

AD: This project came together quicker than any other project I’ve ever done. Six months ago, in a period of time where I could have never imagined this happening, I made music in a vacuum. I’ve made music for such a long time and I made it just because I have always done it and I knew I always would do it. It was not this curated experience. It was like, here is a year gone by. Here are the songs that I wrote in the year. And then I would take off some that I didn’t like.

If I wrote like, 40 songs in a year, then I would pair it down to like 15. This was much more like, “Okay, now people are listening to me.” I feel like the person I was was somebody who was living to write songs. Like it was my project of the time. I naturally kind of do this thing where when I have a feeling I translate it into a song at some point or another, but I was doing it very intentionally. Like ‘Big News Day’, which is the first song on the record, I literally just had a weird Tuesday and I wrote down two lines from it. It’s a collection of common and mundane experiences. That’s why I think people don’t really want to know what they’re about, because if you boil them down to the center, they would be boring.

How does your inner child feel right now?

AD: I’m really trying to take deep breaths and focus on how much fun she would be having. When I released this album, I had a day where I was really trying to focus on that and also trying to keep very present with it because I am conscious of building something standing the test of time if I’m lucky enough, but there is not a single guarantee. There’s not a guarantee in career. There’s not a guarantee in life. And the things that I have achieved thus far, the things I’ve experienced thus far and gotten to witness are so rare and so fun that even just this has been wonderful. I’ve been having a real ball.

Child me made music and probably wanted to do this more than me a year ago did. She would be shocked that my whole thing for such a long time was “I think that I could be a songwriter but I don’t think people are going to want to hear me sing.” I had a complex because by like 12 I was listening to so much Demi Lovato that I was like, “If you can’t sing like Demi Lovato you cannot sing,” and I cannot sing like Demi Lovato.

With the album being out, what is next for you? Are you considering visuals at all?

AD: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s what I’m liking about this album. It feels kind of like a nice, slow intro. Now I’m just gonna sit here and do what I have meant to do for a while. Visuals definitely, we’re going to do a live video. I think it’s going to be ‘Everyone Likes To Be Forgiven’. I’m feeling very confident about that because I want to do an arrangement thing if I can swing it. I just really want to introduce myself in a nice broad fashion and take my time doing so. My main goal is to release a ton of music”.

Atwood Magazine spent some time with Annabelle Dinda. Some Things Never Leave is one of the best albums of the year. If you have not heard the album yet, I would thoroughly recommend that you do so. Dinda has a run of North American dates. I hope that she plays in the U.K. at some point, as it would be wonderful to see her live. I can imagine her music is at its most powerful and affecting from the stage:

“Who are some of your musical north stars, and what are you most excited about the music you're making today?

Annabelle Dinda: I love Sigur Rós and Bowie and Belle and Sebastian and Rufus Wainwright. This is both a predictable and slightly unconventional combined list, but I would call them all some of my north stars in different ways. I’m excited to go more orchestral with music whenever I can, and to also lean into the rock side of things. I expect to be doing full rock operas by 40. (This is a joke but if this was my path I would be very happy, so maybe it’s not a joke.)

There’s an invigorating energy to this record – it’s sprightly, raw, emotionally charged and deeply alive! Can you share a little about the story behind this album?

Annabelle Dinda: Thank you! I think a lot of that energetic, raw sound simply emerged from the timespan we gave ourselves to record it, which was about two weeks all told. It shocked me how much detail we were able to include on the ten songs in that amount of time, but it was also so novel and great– having to make editorial choices and leave some moments open and largely unornamented, relying on the song itself to do most of the heavy lifting. The songs were written in not much more time, it’s basically a sampling of some of the songs I wrote within a three month time period, like a little snippet of life!

As a lyrically forward artist, do you have any favorite lyrics in these songs? I’d love to dive into a couple of your highlights?

Annabelle Dinda: “Everyone Likes To Be Forgiven” has some more of my favorites. “Do you hate when people love you / or do you not relate to them?” and “Do you hate when people know you / or do you know they never can?”

The other day I was listening to “Gunpoint, Headlock” again, and I had some reflective pride over the lyric: “there’s a kid killing soldiers in his video games / they build worlds on the screen, but they leave in the pain.” Sometimes I’ll write something and I won’t fully get it or like it until a month later”.

Some Things Never Leave has been billed by many as Annabelle Dinda’s debut album. It is not. She released three albums previously, so I am not sure why people are calling it a debut. In any case, many people are hearing her music for the first time. Atwood Magazine provided their review for Some Things Never Leave. You can tell that Dinda is going to be releasing music for many years to come:

“The greatest songwriters always seem to have a quiet, steady resolve. A sense of inner confidence that begets presence, as if you could somehow still feel them in an otherwise silent studio. Annabelle Dinda possesses that intangible trait on her debut LP Some Things Never Leave. It’s not that she out sings her range, vies for epic crescendos, or crafts a series of stunning instrumentals. There’s just this natural energy she brings to each moment – earthy, breezy, and effortlessly catchy melodies intertwine with introspective lyricism across forty minutes of emotionally-charged folk music. It’s no-frills, but sometimes simply being yourself and owning the moment is all that’s called for.

As Annabelle Dinda’s first album unfurls, its beauty speaks for itself. ‘Big News Day’ transforms from upbeat acoustic strumming to breathtaking self-harmonizing, and all in the name of lamenting that people, as she sings repeatedly in the refrain, are boring. ‘Doesn’t Matter’ is one of the most graceful and free-flowing songs on the record, with a chorus that will have you unconsciously swaying while Annabelle sneaks little gems like “blood doesn't matter 'til you get cut open” into the verses. ‘The Hand’ is an equally whimsical and offhand track that observes the gender gap in society, but does so with relative neutrality: “this isn't rage, it's worth a mention / this is no statement, I'm complicit / this is a dream, god put me in it.” While all ten songs deliver either some sort of memorable hook, intriguing message, or emotional gut-check, ‘Satellites’ somehow pulls off all three. Elegant acoustic guitars shimmer tranquilly in the background while Dinda’s voice gradually swells toward a beautifully layered rebuke of what could be perceived as relational, political, or just general hypocrisy – “don't bark like it's high divining, don't bite and expect no bruise / don't start with the diatribing, then spite all the love you lose” – adding in, “you put me into space, then hate me when I ask for it.” It might very well be the best song of her early career.

While her bolder statements are worth highlighting, there really isn’t a single part of Some Things Never Leave that doesn’t leave some sort of lasting impression. On ‘Everyone Likes To Be Forgiven’, it’s the way Dinda’s voice alternates between passive (almost spectral) and directly powerful, culminating with the subtle drum kick when she sings “frozen like a fossil, this overflowing cup / do you hate when people move you?” On ‘To Reconcile’, it’s the ice-tinged classical pianos that lend the song its detached, wintry air. On the curtain-call ‘London Plane Trees Grow in Philly’, it’s the sheer power of her words which linger well beyond the record’s expiration. Dinda seems to find inner peace in the give-and-take of the forces of the universe: “when I start catastrophizing, I call you to stem the rising / ache of living, fear of dying / they're the same, says Fate, while sighing.” It’s moments like these that don’t feel overly important at first, but become cornerstones of the album over time.

Once again, Some Things Never Leave’s charm boils down to the artist’s unique sense of self – and the distinctive expression that comes with that. If I had to draw a direct comparison to another musician it would be Katie Crutchfield (for those who don’t know, that’s a massive compliment), but I’d rather say that Annabelle Dinda is simply the first of her. While Annabelle’s debut leaves room for her to experiment and grow, it’s about as perfect a launching pad as any artist could create for themselves. On ‘The Body Remembers’, she sings about having “no map and no tour guide” – respectfully, I don’t think she needs one at all”.

I will leave it there. A tremendous artist that is one of the most talented and distinct songwriters in the world. I do really lover her music. Some Things Never Leave one of the best albums of this year for sure. I was keen to spend some time with and spotlight…