The luscious electropop stylings of Anna of the North are a viral pop sensation that will stride on and on.
They’ve racked up tens of millions of streams across their singles, collaborated with EDM giants The Chainsmokers, and made a hit appearance at Pitchfork Music Festival.
The Scandipop duo are eponymous vocalist Anna Lotterud and producer Brady Daniell-Smith. They first met in a Melbourne bar, leading to a viral hit, a record deal, and Brady’s relocation to join Anna in Norway.
They’ve just released their new video for latest single Oslo:
FEISTY editor Katy met up with the pair in Brighton to learn the story behind their formation, their dream collaborations, and the romance behind one of their best singles.
Thanks for taking the time out for a chat! How has your week been so far?
Anna: “It’s been amazing! I’ve never been to Brighton before, and it’s a totally different vibe from London. I really like it here. It’s also our first time playing our own set without being a support, and people have actually come to our shows!”
For those that are new to you, how did you first get together?
Anna: “I went to study in Melbourne, and before that I was just a bedroom musician in Norway, sat writing sad love songs when my heart got broken. I met Brady at a bar.”
Brady: “I was playing a show, and there must have been about ten people there. Anna’s friends pushed her to get up and sing at the end of my set. I really loved it, and we kept in touch for a few months, just sending through music we liked. She’d gone back to Norway by that point and I was still in Melbourne.”
Anna: “We made Sway and posted it on SoundCloud. It got picked up, for some weird reason…”
Brady: “It was the next day and it had a few thousand plays. None of my tracks had got that many before, even in a month, it was pretty crazy. We got signed, I moved over to Norway, and we thought, ‘OK, let’s give it a go!'”
Did you ever envision that you would be successful?
Brady: “I thought that Anna had everything. She has a great voice, she looks really cool, and there’s something special about her personality. That was already there, and so we just needed some music! I thought it could do well, but I didn’t think it was going to happen that fast, overnight.”
Quite early on you also worked with The Chainsmokers, who remixed your first track Sway.
Anna and Brady: “Yeah!”
How did that come about?
Anna: “They actually got in touch with us.”
Brady: “They were really self-aware. At that point The Chainsmokers weren’t making the bangers that they are today. They’d done that #SELFIE song, but wanted to make some good music as well!”
Is there anyone else you’d like to collaborate with?
Brady: “I want to make a supergroup with Anna, Astrid S and someone else. A girl synthpop One Direction, you know what I mean?”
Anna: “It’s so hard because there’s so many good musicians out there. I’m probably, like, the No 1 Spotify girl. I love making my own playlists, and, what do you call those old CDs people used to make?”
Brady: “Mixtapes?”
Anna: “Yeah! I love that shit! I’m a fan of so many artists.”
Anna’s from quite a small region of Norway. Has that upbringing had an impact on your music?
Anna: “Umm, maybe? I’ve never had any musician friends, and that might be why I’d never done anything before Anna of the North. But when I met Brady, we had music in common. Like you know, you always do things better together?”
Brady: “The thing with me being from New Zealand and her being from Norway is that there’s so many big cultural differences. Norwegians are quite reserved, and I feel like on my own my songs are too revealing, so when we write together we meet each other halfway and it balances out quite nicely.”
Anna is quite expressive on stage, there’s a lot of arm movements and so on. Is that something that just comes naturally?
Anna laughs
Anna: “I don’t know, I think I do that to get my voice out. It’s a way of expressing myself, and to get used to doing what I’m doing? I’m quite new to performing, I’m still learning!”
Brady: “Anna just got thrown into this. We toured with Kygo, and Anna was on stage every night, with fireworks and thousands of people! We hadn’t done many shows before that. She went from being really nervous and shy, to by the end of the tour being so much more confident.”
Anna: “No, I’m still nervous!”
Brady: “Well, you’ve got to be nervous, it’s good to be nervous.”
Anna: “I wish I could see myself live. Not on camera, but just feel and see it, and progress out of that. ‘No, don’t dance like that, you suck!'”
Do you feel comfortable being classed as a pop duo? I know that some find there’s a stigma attached to it.
Anna: “I’ve always loved pop music, and now possibly love it more than before we started! When I was just fourteen years old, I was sitting on Napster downloading all of the baddest hip-hop I could find. Back then I wanted nobody else to know what I was listening to.”
Brady: “Like guilty pleasures?”
Anna: “No, not at all, I just didn’t want to listen to the same things as other people. I wanted to be different.”
In 2016 you released Baby. What was the creative process behind that song? It’s been quite successful!
Brady: “It was the first song that myself and Anna wrote together, so it’s special and meaningful for us. Before that the songs were already there, so it was kind of back to the drawing board.”
Anna: “Brady already had an idea for the song, and I heard it and really loved it, but the lyrics were totally different.”
Brady: “We had the chords and the drum beat, but we hadn’t really figured out the meaning and the storyboard, and that’s where Anna’s really good.”
Anna: “It was actually a really easy process. That song was meant to be.”
Is there a story or meaning behind the song?
Brady: “Oh, we’ll leave that for the listener to decide!”
So there is one, but you’re not telling, right?
Brady: “I think it’s better if people take their own meanings from it. What it means to me is different from what it means to Anna, or to somebody else, and I like that we don’t tell anyone.”
Anna: “I was in a relationship at that point, and I’d had my ups and downs. It was written in that situation. Everyone has been in the position where they really like someone but it’s hard, you don’t know where the other person is at, and we’d both experienced that.”
Brady: “It’s a really vulnerable process, songwriting. There’s no other job where you have to look at yourself and be honest about your mistakes, and share that, record that for the world.”
What can we expect from Anna of the North from here?
Brady: I think we’ll see how things go!
Anna laughs
Brady: We’re working on writing an album at the moment. There’s our new single [Us] and then another set of songs that are already finished [including Oslo].”
Anna: “We’re definitely going to keep doing our thing. I never thought I was going to do music, but now I want to keep at it, whether people listen to it or not! Whatever happens, it’s going to be music from here.”
It’s all happened so quickly for you, almost overnight. Do you sometimes think it’s moving too fast?
Brady: “Not really! I’m 28, so…”
Anna: “It should hurry up!”
Anna of the North’s new single Oslo is out on January 13. Find them on Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud.
