About Annie

Complementing Anne Lilia Berge Strand’s pick ‘n’ mix, Pitchfork-to-Popjustice, genrehopping pincer movement are an array of handpicked associates: ‘Don’t Stop’ reunites Annie with Timo Kaukolampi and Richard X - collaborators from the first album – and introduces a new friends Xenomania and Datarock. It’s a twelve-course feast for the modern musical connoisseur but while it’s so fond of ticking boxes that you wouldn’t be surprised to find it outside Boots with a clipboard asking for five minutes of your time, it’s also an effortless and organic blend with Annie centre stage.

Like many of the best things in life ‘Don’t Stop’, and its irresistible lead single ‘I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me’, started with a kiss - in this instance one from a little fella dressed in purple. “When I started writing for the album I wanted to be inspired by Prince’s ‘Kiss’,” Annie remembers, “and while the lyrics came later that’s how ‘I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me’ started off.” With its playground chant of “I know your girlfriend hates me, I see it in her eyes”, whip-cracking sound effects and a ludicrous ice cream van outro ‘Girlfriend’ is, Annie explains, “about a girl who has a really good friend, who’s a guy, but he also has a girlfriend. It sounds like there might be a little more to this story than Annie’s letting on but that’s for another time; right now ‘Girlfriend’, demoed with longterm collaborator Timo at the beginning of last year then finished with Richard X in the summer, is a brilliant refresher course in everything that was great about the last album and a tantalising glimpse at some of what’s great about the new one.