Why Annahstasia’s Brilliant Debut Is The Album We Need Now

Timing is indeed everything. L.A.-based singer/songwriter Annahstasia has been working for years on her stunning debut album, Tether.

Now, when she is finally ready to share it with the world, the sublime folk-tinged collection is the perfect album for these troubled times. Indeed, from the opening “Be Kind” Annahstasia has crafted a soothing, calming, essential manifesto, that at times conjures up the eternal Nick Drake, to help us navigate the anger and aggression of the world right now.

Tether is more than just a brilliant debut album. It is a tonic for these times. I spoke with Annahstasia about the album, celebrity I the digital age, vulnerability and more.

Steve Baltin: Did you think about the gentility of this record and the sharp contrast with the world climate?

Annahstasia: I did think about that for this record. I think a long part of my career up to this point was me trying to find my relationship with silence and my relationship with making noise and where I sat within that. And in an industry that constantly is asking you to be the sparkliest gem in the room or to draw a lot of attention to yourself, I never felt comfortable doing that for no reason. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the attention or the applause, it’s more that I don’t think I should be getting that if I don’t earn it or haven’t done something that I feel contributes to the world. So, my persona developed as I just grew, I noticed I’m the person at the party, I sit in one place in the room and then let everybody come and talk to me if they choose and engage in that conversation and I’m open hearted in that way where I’ll sit and I’ll talk with someone for as long as they want to sit there. But I don’t really move and my music in a way is the same where I’m going to just perform this at my volume, at my pace, at my level of silence and respect for softness and let everybody crouch to listen, kind of like people who talk in a whisper who are very wise. You just kind of shut up and you have to be quiet to listen and hear what they’re saying.

Baltin: How long did it take you to get comfortable with that because as you say, it is an industry that wants you to be loud?

Anahstasia: I’ve had this conversation with a lot of my peers and with myself. The idea of being an artist now in the digital age, it’s just a more extreme version of what, and somehow also micro version of what artistry, music, music, musicianship and being a performer was like in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I think of [David]

Bowie and how Bowie always played different characters or how Madonna reinvented herself with every other album and had a different persona kind of. Now there’s not the same access to that type of fame. But for some reason you’re constantly being observed even as a non-famous person. So, there’s still this pressure to create a brand or like a character around yourself and through the brand and the character you can have some semblance of privacy and introversion if you do it right. But I found for myself that I didn’t ever want to be in a position where the character that I’m playing traps me into being that for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to craft that kind of cage for myself. So my relationship as an introverted person with the internet was trying to try to be as honest as possible but without oversharing and my tagline for a long time on my social, I don’t know if it’s still that, it said, “Take what I give you.” That’s kind of my sentiment towards public facing art, “Take what I give you, don’t ask for anything else,” because I give a lot. I think I’m a very generous person within the dynamic of as a stranger interacting with other strangers, I’m pretty generous with my worldview and my life, but I also only want to deliver things that I have considered and tried to remove my ego from as much as I can because I don’t ever want to platform a juvenile perspective, as much as I can. Obviously, I’m not perfect, but I want my digital persona to also reflect that. I’m not perfect, therefore please don’t pedestal me. I don’t ever want to be pedestaled at any point. And I don’t want that to be sustainable in my career because it’s an

Baltin: Bowie was able to change all the time, but he was absolutely pedestaled all the time.

Annahstasia: They had privacy to be pedestaled. You still had mystery; the difference now is you don’t have that mystery. It’s impossible to be a perfect anything. These people have passed away and now all the dirty laundry is coming out through the stories that people are telling and you’re finding out that maybe Bowie wasn’t the most aspirational person, or Michael Jackson wasn’t the most aspirational person or Marvin Gaye, or the list goes on and on. I think that their separation of their personal life from their artistry was only possible because they didn’t have the internet in the way we have today so now considering that we can’t get rid of the internet. As a person who is flawed and who is learning and exercising life, how do you protect yourself from the expectation that you’re going to be a role model all the time?

Baltin: I also think though that if you make a record like you’ve made that is so vulnerable and open people do respond more to the music than anything else. Have you found that?

Annahstasia: Yeah, and it’s only on purpose in the sense that my goal is to be honest. The music that I want to make is music that I feel can apply to the broadest amount of human experience because the place that I sing from I sing to heal myself, but I also sing for the people who can’t express certain aspects of their emotion, or they can’t really put their finger on it. So, it’s extremely vulnerable what I’m putting out in the world. And when you put out something that is truly vulnerable it’s like seeing a baby bird with a broken wing on the street. You’re not going to run over it, you’re going to move it out of the way and take care of it. I’ve put myself out there in the world just that fragile.

Baltin: You say you sing to heal yourself. Were the songs on here that surprised you because I have found talking to artists writing is so subconscious?

Annahstasia: Yeah, I find my experience with writing to be outside of time most of the time. Very subconscious writing style because I sit down with the guitar and I just start singing and things stick and then that’s the song. I don’t ever sit down and go, “I’m going to write a song about this person, or I’m going to sit and write a song about this event.” It never happens that way for me. So sometimes I’ll write a song and I’ll be like, “I didn’t I didn’t know I was feeling like that or that doesn’t even resonate with where I’m at in my life right now.” But two, three years later I’ll be singing it somewhere, I’ll be listening to it and it’ll all click into place and be like that’s why I wrote this song or that’s the advice that I needed now but it came through three years prior. Most of the songs on this record are that way and that’s also why I took so much time with the record. I wrote those songs and then as I was writing them I was performing them live and I was touring with them across the earth and the U.S. and every time I would sing them, the ones that felt more true were the ones that eventually made it on the album or the ones that aligned with the lessons that I needed and the themes around the idea of grounding and tether and finding home within myself. But “Villain” is a great example. “Villain,” when I wrote it, I was in a very vindictive place. I was just mad at this person and feeling very much like I didn’t want any part of them in my life anymore. I felt betrayed, I felt disappointed and hurt. That sentiment was very like just throwing someone’s stuff out of the window. Take it back. But now as I listen to it, it’s actually more of a song about being able to hold both sides of yourself the light and the dark and to realize that we’re all in a way trying our best and that all we can do is keep trying. There’s kindness in it, there’s also the freedom of accepting that you are the villain in some narratives. Once you accept your rock bottom there’s a freedom from that point on.