Hanna Andréa’s Braveheart moves from digital disconnection and self-pressure towards confidence and acceptance, using dream-pop, trip-hop and orchestral production to give each stage its own sonic identity.
GET OFF YOUR PHONE confronts digital disconnection, before Pinnacles, Float and the title track move through self-doubt, empowerment and acceptance.
In this FM PRO 10Q, the Norwegian-American artist discusses breaking pop’s structural rules, translating emotion into production and developing a visual language only after the music is complete.
She also explores how musical theatre, acting and dance shape the cinematic world around her releases.
An EP can show a journey. It can show many sides of the same feeling. It can show how you grow as a person.
Q1. Braveheart moves between screen-age frustration, dream-pop introspection, trip-hop textures and orchestral pop. What emotional journey did you want the EP’s sequencing to create?
I wanted the EP to take you on a journey from a place of feeling somewhat lost or broken to rediscovering your strength and eventually finding a sense of peace. I think the various sonic worlds of the songs emphasize the stories and emotions on this journey. I like the freedom to have this sonic variety because I never feel like I’m forcing a song to be what it’s not. I think different sounds are good for telling different stories and can really land the listener in the world of each one and I feel like that’s what we’ve done on this EP.
Q2. What real-life moment first sparked GET OFF YOUR PHONE, and how quickly did its central message take shape?
I’d been wanting to write a song about the frustration of the people around you being on their phone all the time for a few years, but had never really gotten around to it. I had the idea first when I was hanging out with some friends who I don’t get to see too often and we ended up spending most of our time together on my friend’s sofa, everyone consumed by their own phone. I wasn’t really on social media at the time so I felt really awkward and found myself longing for connection with these people sitting right next to me.
Q3. How did collaborating with Michael Biancaniello, James Conner, Kelsey Gauthier and Dominique Vellutato influence the song’s direction?
They all brought their own frustrations and experiences to the table, turns out it’s a really relatable topic. If I hadn’t written this song with them I don’t think it would have been as comedic and probably not even in the same genre. I knew I wanted to do wordplays and have a very direct tone, but I think they really helped me make light of the situation and make it a song that felt applicable and relatable to a lot of people.
Q4. Pinnacles centres on the phrase “feels like falling.” What personal experience or emotional state helped you build the song around that image?
Pinnacles, to me, centre on this need to keep climbing to higher and higher heights in the search for validation from success or achievement. I’ve always been a very non-stop person, but I reached a point where I wondered whether my achievements were hurting me as much as they were helping me. The falling imagery I think really came from the fear that if you stop reaching for the pinnacles, the fear of the feeling of digressing into a former version of yourself that you are trying to escape by collecting your achievements.
Q5. Float feels suspended between intimacy and escape. What did you want listeners to experience inside its dreamlike world?
To me, Float is about reclaiming your power. It’s finally standing up to whatever is putting you down and reminding yourself of all the beautiful things that make you you. I hope that this song makes people feel strong, confident, and powerful.
Q6. Across the EP, moments of vulnerability gradually give way to confidence. Was that emotional progression intentional from the beginning?
This progression was actually something that was uncovered over time. I think the songs grew with me, and by the end we discovered that we had built a full journey. I love how stories and themes can unfold over time in such an unexpected way as you write. It can really teach you something about yourself, and it’s always these things that feel the most authentic and meaningful to me.
Q7. You favour cohesive bodies of work over isolated singles. What can an EP communicate about you that one song cannot?
An EP can show a journey. It can show many sides of the same feeling. It can show how you grow as a person. It can tell a complete story instead of the fragments that you get in a song. I’ve always loved bodies of work because I love the feeling of completion of having a chapter of the story all gathered together.
I’m the kind of person who likes to put albums on when I listen to music and step into its world. It makes me feel like I get to connect with the artist better. And I hope that I can provide these same feelings for my listeners.
Q8. You also composed Muse! The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical, which reached Lincoln Center and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. How has writing for characters and theatrical narratives changed the way you construct pop songs?
I’ve found that I tend to favor more exact or literal lyrics, something which I think is much more common and accepted in songwriting for musical theater. I also think that my experience writing for musicals and consuming musical theater music has led me to feel more comfortable playing with my pop music. I think pop music can often be kind of rigid, but I love to play around with structure, time signature, tempo, and things like that.
Q9. FM PRO TECH: How do you decide which production elements should remain intimate and which should expand into the cinematic scale associated with your music?
I always want all the elements of the song to feel like they were born for each other and that they are falling into place together in the best possible way in the way that the universe intended. If I’m starting with melody and lyrics, then we are trying to use the track to bring out the story and the emotion behind the words. If we are starting with a track, I’m listening for details and emotions, what does it remind me of, so I know what the song needs to be about.
Q10. FM PRO TECH: You describe your releases as cohesive bodies of work supported by videos and visualisers. How early do you develop the visual language, and which tools or production techniques help you maintain continuity between the music and its screen identity?
I like to wait until the songs are finished to discover the visual world. I’m always looking to the stories in the songs as well as the sonic worlds and seeing what I envision when I hear it to decide on the visual world. I love it because it’s a fresh way to explore the story. It’s also important to me because for most of my life I have been in the performing arts world doing acting and dance.
So I feel like I get to show off a different side of me, a side of me I really don’t want to lose and a side of me I want to share with people. It’s a side that it’s not always that easy to explore as a recording artist, especially when you don’t do a lot of live shows.
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