Anna of the North’s star on the rise
of the North went global with the title track of 2017 album “Lovers.” Partly because of its inclusion in the 2018 Netflix film “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” partly because the track has a wonderful, hypnotic, mellow bounce, “Lovers” has tallied tens of millions of streams. But right after the success, the dreamy electropop duo made up of Anna Lotterud and Brady Daniell-Smith split.
Anna of the North became just Lotterud, or was it even Lotterud’s project? The singer-songwriter wondered if she had a musical future.
“I was asking myself, ‘What kind of artist am I? Am I good enough on my own? What is Anna alone?’” Lotterud said from a tour stop in her home country of Norway.
While lawyers and managers hashed out the details of what Anna of the North would become, Lotterud sneaked away to London to try writing without her former partner.
“I didn’t know if I could keep the name or what, but I said to myself, ‘I can’t let them stop me,’ and behind everyone’s back went off to write for two weeks,” she said. “The first thing I wrote, something I was super happy about and proud of, was ‘Thank Me Later.’ I thought, ‘This is possible. I can do this.’ ”
“I went right to my manager, I didn’t even have a demo, just the song in my head and said, ‘You can’t hear this but you need to hear this,’” she added with a laugh.
Now on her second stateside headlining tour, which stops Thursday at Brighton Music Hall, Lotterud penned a sweet, simple gem about infatuation with “Thank Me Later.” Not surprisingly, the cut has become the latest streaming smash from Anna of the North’s second LP, last year’s “Dream Girl.”
The other hit listeners quickly gravitated toward was the slowburn indie pop of “Leaning On Myself.” In it, Lotterud dispenses with metaphors, singing in her forceful coo: “Lately, I’ve been leaning on myself/Lately, I don’t need nobody else.”
“Some songs just feel like they are meant to be written, they are waiting to be written and both ‘Leaning on Myself’ and ‘Thank Me Later’ felt like that,” she said. “The split made me more free in every way, but especially musically. At the same time, it is really hard and scary at first. Music is all about trying and failing and doing that again and again. I’m not scared of that anymore.”
Lotterud has become fearless when it comes to writing. But her new confidence never turns to ego or unnecessary experimentation on “Dream Girl.” Instead, the LP features restrained, highly melodic pop. It has a certainty in its style. As Lotterud says, each of the songs feels as it was just waiting to be written.