Anna Nalick is a multi-platinum selling singer songwriter from California, who in addition to writing all her own music, has been writing for other artists since the age of 15. She released her first studio album, Wreck of the Day, featuring her first hit single “Breathe (2AM)” under Sony/Columbia in 2004. The album shot to the top of the charts and sent Nalick on a nearly five-year tour around the world. Epic Records released her third hit single “Shine” shortly before Nalick began working as an independent artist.
In 2011 Nalick released her first independently produced album, Broken Doll & Odds & Ends, which she describes as, “mostly acoustic with some unusual instrumentation. I wanted to release the songs and fractions of songs that I was kicking around during the Columbia years before I moved on to all new material. They're a time capsule, plus I liked the songs too much to just leave them behind.” The independent release of Broken Doll & Odds & Ends exceeded Nalick's expectations with the sale of 30,000 copies in the first month, and it afforded her the time to take a break from touring and go back to school. Nalick studied creative writing at UCLA while also writing and acting with alumni playwrights and actors through Los Angeles Playhouse West from 2011-2015.
In 2014 Nalick began touring again and in 2017 she wrapped production on her self-produced fourth album At Now. Combining analog and digital production, Nalick explored new territory with what she called, "(an) opportunity to stretch creatively and personally into new territory with no fear of confusing the landscape or minding expectations. The through-line in my career has always been honesty. I approach music intuitively from the first phrase on paper to the last day in mastering. At Now follows a story of loss and letting go in favor of new life, so a range of live acoustic folk tunes and spacey electronic harmonies is appropriate for the journey. The arc was tremendous and the sound had to reflect that."
Nalick wrapped her fifth studio album in 2019. This acoustic production by Chesky Records was recorded entirely live in one day in Manhattan's St. Paul the Apostle Church using Chesky Records signature production technique for creating binaural recordings. The album entitled, The Blackest Crow, is a conceptual collection of covers dating back to as early as the 1850's through the 1990's with each song representing a different aspect of "time" and how it is perceived. Nalick explains, "I've always seen time as a sort of coil because I'm constantly finding myself coming full circle. Y'know, that's just perception though. We look for patterns to make sense of things. There's this satisfying feeling of vindication in assigning a culminative present happening to a past experience even though we know we might do some adjustive reassigning later. Really all we can claim control over is right now, but nostalgia is a flirt, and the feelings of possibility, the sense of responsibilty attached to tomorrow mean purpose and potential. These songs collected from 150 years of great artists explore what humans tend to do with all of that. Like we all have a Doc Brown tinkering in our subconscious."
Copyright © Anna Nalick 2021