Singers with Unique Voices: Annie (The Unique Voices Club #23)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on Annie.

Taken from Deezer

Anne Lilia Berge Strand, known professionally as Annie, started out in the era of Liz Phair and other sounds like No Doubt from the late 90s/early 2000s with an indie rock band named Suitcase when she was in her teens and an underground hit single. While she describes her music as "pop with strange edges," other people have described her as a Norwegian Kylie Minogue and an indie artist with one eye on the dancefloor. I'm inclined to agree after listening to most of her stuff that sounds like Avicii (RIP) was the DJ mixing mastermind behind it. With three albums under her belt, two of which come from the aforementioned era, I'm taken back with nostalgia not to that time frame (duh, I was merely an elementary schooler than who listened to Pink and Kelly Clarkson on the major radio) but to the 2010s when house music took over. House is already a huge genre over in South Africa ("Stereo Love" was my jam), so listening to Annie reminds me of my adolescence and all the impromptu dance parties.

Her 2020 album Dark Hearts sounds more ethereal than her others and apparently meant to be considered the soundtrack to a currently non-existent movie (some of the songs sound like that). Obviously after a 10-year gap between LP releases more experimentation and evolution is guaranteed to happen. Similar to Aurora, another singer with a unique voice, Annie is Norwegian and also has this ethereal quality to her voice similar to some Norwegian instruments like the krogharpe and seljefloyte, but it works with all this dance pop and dream pop despite there not being much power behind it. The reverb in songs like "Corridors of Time" gives her an almost auto-tune and echo-y effect to her already thin melancholic vocal range. I'm tempted to say that she was doing what Ellie Goulding does before Ellie Goulding started doing it, but she doesn't have the husky belt that Ellie has. Nor does she have as malleable a voice as Ellie. But Annie's music is the kind I would either slow dance or breakdance to.

You can listen to any of Annie's three albums wherever you listen to music, and in fact she just released a single recently titled "Next 2 U" that sounds like a club song (there's a club mix version too) reminiscent of that dance track cover of "Heaven." It's kind of weird for me to listening to dance music while sitting on my porch writing this in the middle of city noise rather than an event space like a club, but yeah, I wish Avicii were still alive to work with Annie. They probably would have created something great. So go follow Annie to keep track of what she's up to.

And that is all for this week on The Unique Voices Club. As always, join the Patreon so that you have the ability to suggest artists to me. Since you're reading this blog (or follow me), you're clearly part of the revolution of artists and nonconformists breaking the status quo, so this is an opportunity you won't want to walk away from. If someone you know is artistically inclined but lacks the confidence in their own ability, share this blog with them. There's power in the unconventional.

Stay educated,

Alexia