“Heartbeat”
from the album Anniemal
2005
iTunes
Download a free MP3 of “Heartbeat” from Amazon.com.
Watch the video for “Heartbeat” for free at the iTunes Music Store.
Late last summer, pop cognoscenti on both sides of the Atlantic began buzzing about a new song by a little-known 26-year-old Norwegian singer, Anne Lilia Berge Strand, who records under the less cumbersome moniker Annie. “Chewing Gum” had a mischievous lyric about toying with men’s affections, but the song’s real subject seemed to be, well, itself. Its title promised a sugary pop confection, and sure enough, the music — built around a chirpy lead vocal, a wash of background oohs and aahs, and a chugging, beeping beat that bowed in the direction of the Tom Tom Club’s 1981 hit “Genius of Love” — was a scientifically perfect bubblegum anthem.
 Annie |
Soon, more Annie songs were leaked onto the Internet. By the end of 2004, Annie’s debut album was still commercially available only in Scandinavia, and none of her singles had been released in the United States. Yet she made a strong showing in American year-end best-of polls, most notably in the influential Web magazine Pitchfork — the online bible of indie-rock nerds — which ranked “Chewing Gum” its 11th best single of the year, and gave the No. 1 spot to another Annie track, “Heartbeat.”
Sitting in a café on an overcast spring day here in her hometown of Bergen, Annie professes shock at this turn of events. In Norway, she is a huge star, a chart-topping winner of multiple music awards. “But I never, ever, ever thought my records would even get heard in the States,” she says.
Last week her album, Anniemal, finally received a United States release (Big Beat/Atlantic) — a chance to parlay the kind of hype no record company could manufacture into actual CD sales and, just possibly, a place in the pop diva firmament. By any measure, Annie is unlikely competition for the queens of American radio. A small, pretty, unassuming woman, Annie is a D.J., and she seems far more comfortable in that semi-anonymous role, half hidden behind the turntables in a club full of dancers, than strutting and singing in front of a worshipful audience. Indeed, she admits not only to a case of stage fright, but to also extreme self-consciousness about dancing in her music videos — hardly a match for the likes of Beyoncé or Gwen Stefani.
But what Annie lacks in bravura, she makes up for in songs. Anniemal is a true album, strong from top to bottom, whose dozen quirky, infectious songs flit from electro to Motown-tinged disco to stark, twitchy R&B that will appeal to American palates. (Listeners may be tickled to hear a Norwegian trying the breakneck speed singing perfected by Beyoncé and R. Kelly.) Annie has a breathy wisp of a voice, and her vocal range is limited; but there is charm in her deadpan delivery, and her songwriting is full of the flair for melody for which Scandinavian pop is famous.
Indeed, Annie’s singular sound took shape in one of Scandinavia’s most peculiar and vibrant musical corners. Bergen is a picturesque university city of just over 200,000 nestled between mountains on Norway’s rain-lashed western coast. (Locals will cheerily inform visitors to Bergen that the city is Europe’s dampest — on average, it rains about 280 days a year.) The weather is bad, but the town is lively, teeming with nightclubs and live music; in recent years, Bergen has produced a number of pop musicians of international stature, including the singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche (who recently relocated to New York), the celebrated indie-pop group Kings of Convenience, and the electronica duo Royksopp, who produced three tracks on “Anniemal.”
On a recent Saturday evening, Annie and seemingly every other young pop musician in Bergen were packed into Café Opera, a tiny club just off of the city’s main square. A group of bearded, lank-haired young musicians carrying banjos, pedal steel guitars and upright basses set up in the middle of the room and played a set of bluegrass songs. After midnight, D.J.’s started spinning records for an overflow crowd of dancers. Annie took her turn behind the decks, playing a lively mix of Norwegian techno, obscure ’70s soul nuggets, and ’80s radio pop. Annie is frequently compared to Kylie Minogue, Australia’s pint-size answer to Madonna, but it’s impossible to imagine Ms. Minogue cueing up Steve Miller’s “Abracadabra” for a roomful of sweaty friends.
Annie’s musical career began in Bergen in the late 1990s, when she met a legendary figure on the local music scene, Tore Andreas Kroknes, who at the time was producing excellent electronic dance records under the name D.J. Erot. The pair became romantically involved, moved into Annie’s mother’s apartment, and began collaborating. “I played him Madonna’s first album, a record I really love,” Annie recalls. “He sampled a bit of the song ‘Everybody,’ and began making a track from it. I started singing a melody along with it, and it sounded really good.” The resulting song, “Greatest Hit,” was recorded in a tiny studio, borrowed from Royksopp, and released in 1999 in a limited edition of 500 7-inch singles. The records sold out in two days, the song became an underground club hit in Norway and Britain, and recording contract offers came flooding in. “Suddenly, I thought, ‘Hey, maybe I will have a pop career,’ ” she says.
But Mr. Kroknes, born with a degenerative heart condition, soon became desperately ill. He was hospitalized for months, and died in April 2001, at the age of 23. “For a long time I was too depressed and exhausted to do anything,” Annie says. “But then I thought, ‘Tore would be quite upset with you if you just stopped making music.’ “
In fact, Anniemal is something of a posthumous triumph for Mr. Kroknes. “Greatest Hit” appears on the record, and it establishes the album’s theme: celebrating the blippy sounds, and guileless spirit, of early ’80s dance-pop. And therein, perhaps, lies the secret to Annie’s appeal. Eighties revivalism is rampant in today’s dance music, but the vast majority of acts approach the music from a chilly distance, wallowing, with barely concealed sneers, in the kitschiness and naïveté of it all. But along with her producers — including the Finnish musician Timo Kaukolampi and the British producer Richard X — Annie regards her 80’s source material with reverence, as a repository of treasured sounds and an old-fashioned kind of pop-song innocence.
Smack in the middle of the album, sits Annie’s very own song for the ages. “Heartbeat” is unlike anything else on Anniemal: there are no electro pings, no rubbery synth bass lines or clattering drum machines and just the faintest hit of a keyboard. It’s Annie Unplugged, scored for a rock band setup — a gorgeous, yearning song about the thrill of newfound love that moves between a mild funk groove and charging garage rock. The song is scheduled as the first American single, and if it sounds a bit retrograde next to the sonically visionary hip-hop songs that dominates hit radio, it has a tune to beat just about anything out there.
In the meantime, Annie may soon discover a downside to being American indie rockers’ favorite pop princess. Hipsters who hailed her when she was obscure singer from an exotic Northern land may recoil if and when she starts jostling for “TRL” airtime with the Simpson sisters. But Annie has a decent handle on the fickleness and absurdities of pop taste.
“It’s weird when people tell me that they like me but would never listen to Kylie Minogue or Britney. I’m not quite sure why, but I’m seen as, you know, somehow cool. My music is the pop that they’re allowed to like.” She smiles. “At least for the moment.” ~ Judy Rosen, New York Times
Stream the full album at the Vice Records website.