Anna of the North has never been afraid of feelings. She sings about them, talks about them, and—by her own admission—sometimes overshares them. But after years of writing music and second-guessing herself, she’s realized that being too hard on yourself can strip the joy out of art.
“The journey is supposed to be fun,” she says. “Instead of being scared of doing the right or wrong thing, I’m trying to just live in it and do what feels good for me.”
That perspective has reshaped her career. Her 2023 album Crazy Life marked the first time she let go of perfectionism and embraced the mess of it all. Two years later, she’s pushing even further, releasing her new album Girl in a Bottle today. For Anna, every release is another step in a story that’s moving forward, driven by curiosity rather than fear.
She hasn’t always been this free. When her debut album Lovers came out in 2017, she felt exposed, even embarrassed, by the sound of her own voice everywhere.
“I put it out and it was like, embarrassing,” she remembers. “But now I’m like, wow, it’s really good. It’s aged really well.”
Time has softened her self-criticism, showing her that art often reveals its value long after the moment of release.
“It’s fun looking back on things you were insecure about and now you’re just like, yes,” she says with a grin. “With time, when you get space from everything, it all starts to make sense.”
That growth has made her music more direct. Crazy Life leaned inward more than her earlier work, confronting vulnerability head-on.
She admits she sometimes says too much, but that’s also her strength.
“Music has helped me process things,” she says. “It’s just different listening to yourself saying and singing it, and then listening back again. You realize what you’ve been trying to say all along.”
For Anna, songwriting has never been about strategy. It’s instinctive, something she often only understands in hindsight.
“I don’t really know why those words come,” she says. “But when I listen to the song afterward, I’m like, ‘OK, I get it.’”
That’s why her music feels like a diary—snapshots of moments that take on new meaning with time.
She hopes her songs can be there for people in both joy and sadness.
“Whether you’re happy or you’re sad, there’s some song of mine you can listen to,” she says.
That tension between past and future weighs heavily on her mind. She’s more confident now, comfortable calling herself an artist and at ease in her work, but she doesn’t want to lose the fragile honesty that shaped her beginnings.
“There’s this little part of the Lovers Anna, the girl who was so scared of everything, that I want to find again,” she says. “There was some really emotional stuff in there. And every part of you is important—you struggle to move forward, and then you forget where you were. I don’t want to forget.”
Even fear itself, she’s learned, has its purpose.
Looking back on her early concerts, she cringes at how nervous she was, but she also recognizes the value of those moments.
“I can look back at concerts I’ve done and things I’ve done where I was really scared, and it was horrible,” she says. “But then I realize I wouldn’t have been here without going through those things. Everything has been a reason for where I am today.”
That reflection has reshaped how she views her career. She approaches it now with gratitude for the process and a determination to keep moving.
“Music is really fun. It’s like a diary. And you can never do the same thing twice,” she says. “You always have to move on.”
Moving forward also means rediscovering what drew her to music in the first place. The more she’s created, the less she’s listened, and that’s something she wants to change.
She still finds inspiration in artists like The Japanese House and Elio, but she knows she needs to widen her scope.
“It used to come so easily, but I kind of lost that. I need to find it again.”
That hunger to fall back in love with music from the outside mirrors her desire to revisit the scared but honest girl who made Lovers. It’s about reclaiming the spark while carrying her hard-won confidence into what’s next.
Her new songs and her art don’t feel like strategy as much as reminders. The girl who once doubted if she was even an artist is still here, but she’s no longer running from the fear. She’s dancing with it.
