INTERVIEW: Anna of the North on her 'Crazy Life' album and returning to touring: "Now I'm travelling and touring again I'm like, ‘oh my god, this is what life used to be!’"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Morten Sandvik
Norway’s Anna Of The North (real name Anna Lotterud) has been releasing music since 2014 when she dropped her debut single ‘Sway’. Her music is a beguiling form of electronica, with that uniquely Scandinavian touch of etherealness and otherworldliness that makes it feel just that little bit more special. Although born and bred in Norway, her musical career started while she was studying in Melbourne when she formed Anna Of The North as a duo with Brady Daniell-Smith, before going solo in 2018.
Over the years she has steadily gained critical acclaim as well as collecting a huge fanbase along the way. She has accumulated more than 500 million global streams and has collaborated with some of the biggest names in music including Dua Lipa, Tyler, the Creator, Rejjie Snow, Steve Lacy and Snakehips.
Last year she released her third studio album Crazy Life, dropping a deluxe edition of the album earlier this year. Across its fourteen tracks, she brings elements of indie and folk to the baseline of electronica. An album Lotterud says is about “everything, nothing and all in between” , the spectre of covid and its aftermath loom large in its lyrics about both appreciating and questioning life. “Always on my own…Wondering if my friends still likе me / Anybody else feel likе me?” she asks in ‘Swirl’, a bubbly pop song with its inherent happiness a front for the lyrics questioning life and being stuck, feeling you can’t break free.
‘Ridin’, a slower electro jam looks at grabbing onto life with both hands and making the most of it. “I just wanna dance all night / We got to remember that life moves fast / Let's spеnd time together”
‘I Do You’ is a glittering electro-synth gem which also encases a sense of melancholy, while ‘Listen’ amps up the 1980s synth-sound but also brings in some smooth soul and R&B vibes. With 9 million Spotify streams and rising, the single ‘Meteorite’, featuring Gus Dapperton, is as bright and perky as ever, leaning more into an alt-pop, indie feel. The album ends with ‘Try My Best’, with its summery, almost reggae like vibe, it’s lyrics navigating a complex relationship: “we both got feelings but sometimеs we cannot feel a single thing”
Anna of the North creates pop music that is infectious, moving and mesmerising, but also teams it with lyrics that are remarkably touching, complex and insightful. It’s pop music that can pull you up and make you think, connecting you more deeply with her music. Recently touring Australia for the first time in five years, we caught up with Lotterud to chat more about her music and career.
Hi Anna! Thank you so much for your time and welcome back to Australia, how are you finding it after five years?
It's amazing. It's really good to be back. I find it crazy that there's a country down here! It's been an amazing experience meeting old friends and new friends. That I can travel to the other side of the world and there's people that know the lyrics and we've connected through music, which is really powerful. Music is a powerful thing.
Your current tour is filled with songs from Crazy Life. How have you found the Aussie fans reacted to those live performances, are they singing those lyrics back at you?
Yeah, I'm really surprised. The people that come, they're really devoted and they know the songs and they're like big fans. They know the new albums and the new songs, so it's been really fun.
Beautiful. I wanted to ask you a bit about the album, you said that Crazy Life was inspired by the ups and downs and the positives and negatives, which, I guess, is life in a nutshell. Can you tell me more about the inspiration behind the album?
It's definitely inspired by COVID. Well, not by COVID but what we went through during COVID, the lockdown and the isolation. It's more an inner journey than an outer journey, it’s a lot of my own thoughts, you know?
I think you really painted that picture of locked down and isolation with the accompanying visuals and music videos. It was incredible.
Yeah, that's the entire thing. The album artwork as well, and the trackless starts with ‘Bird Sing’ in the morning, and then it ends with ‘Let Go’ in the night and the day repeats itself. It's the same in the music video and the house that I built and everything, so it's all connected, living the same day again and again. For me, I didn't really realise what I went through during the lockdown, and I do think that now, for the first time, I feel alive again. It's a really good thing that we humans are really adaptable, we get comfortable with stuff. During COVID, I accepted it, you know? And it's not until now, travelling and touring I'm like, ‘oh my god, this is what life used to be!’ And I don't know like, what life is better. I have missed exploring and travelling and meeting people and all these things. Life is about relations to other people and without other people, it wouldn't have been a world you know what I mean? For me being social is an important thing I love. I love meeting people and connecting. This album was definitely more an inner journey and that feeling of maybe getting too comfortable with the fact that nothing was happening.
This is true! You recently released the deluxe version, and you had a few new tracks, you have ‘Swirl’, ‘Ridin’ and ‘Try My Best’ and their such great songs, but I was wanting to know what was it about these tracks that you've felt really fit with the album's core?
For me, I wanted to keep that tension. I wanted it to be an album you can listen through without wanting to skip songs and make that journey. I felt the songs on the album were the songs that needed to be there. Even though I love the other three songs. I was like, ‘this is the album’. Then we decided that we can add those three later to kind of finish the story up. For me, as I said, ‘Bird Sing’ is the start and then it goes through the entire album, and we end at night with ‘Let Go’. I imagined a picture where you go to bed, and instead of overthinking everything, you just let go and get a good night's sleep and then try again tomorrow.
You are multi talented, and I was wanting to know because you've got so many tools to your musical belt, both visually and song making, what was your journey into music? Because you seem like you could have gone in so many directions with your art.
I did start studying graphic design, but I've always been doing music. And here I am. I've always been doing music. When I moved to Melbourne, I brought my guitar and I spent a lot of time by myself because I didn't have any friends because I moved to Melbourne all by myself. And that's where I started recording and I started releasing things on SoundCloud. Then I met a lot of creative people who were musicians who were really open minded and supportive. I started talking louder about what I wanted to do in life and for the first time I said I was into music and that was maybe a path that I could try out.
Your musical trajectory obviously started in Melbourne, but you come from the epicentre of pop music, like Scandinavia is where everyone goes to create magical pop. Was there ever any kind of expectation that was put on you or that you put on yourself because of where you're from? Or did you just ignore all of that?
Ironically my career started more or less in Australia and the US and I've always been a bit of an international artist. I think there's a lot of people from Norway that didn't realise that I was from Norway. I love Norway and Scandinavia, but I've always been a bit different as well. I don't think I'm a normal Norwegian artist.
Obviously you’re touring, you're busy everyone's singing songs to you. But what has been the one song that you've really loved singing on this tour?
I have found ‘No Good Without U’ is becoming such a cool live song for me. It’s funny how you take songs from a record and then you start playing them live and they get a whole new life. I'm pretty excited about that one, after I play that song then the show really starts!
Crazy Life is out now via PIAS. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Anna of the North you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and X
