Nine Songs: Fanny Andersen talks the songs that inspire her art

Nine Songs

Fanny Andersen

Norway's upcoming popstar talks the songs that made her.

29 December 2017, 09:00 | Words by Ed Nash

(Fanny Andersen) (Nine Songs)

Fanny Andersen is drawn to musical mavericks, pioneers who took one look at the rule book and wisely chose to ignore it.

Andersen’s music mixes a soundtrack of technicolour pop with lyrics that are intimate and candid. She made her breakthrough with the wondrous ‘Kids’ in 2016 and followed it up with “Not a Toy” in September of this year, but the pivotal songs in her life draw on a range of genres.

As with her own music, the keystones for Andersen are songs that are both emotive and innovative, ranging from Frank Ocean’s experiments in sound to the way Adele and Daughter write songs that mirror the sound of a broken heart.

The eureka moment that started Andersen’s fascination with music came when her father put on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen to pass the time on a car journey when she was a child. She describes hearing Freddie Mercury’s cross-pollination of genres as the moment when music morphed from a collection of sounds to hearing and feeling what it was to be connected with a song emotionally and viscerally.

Speaking about her upcoming appearance at our Five Day Forecast, Andersen reaffirmed the influence of Tove Lo, who’s ‘Habits’ provided another touchstone in her writing.

On her plans for 2018, Andersen says “Everything is kind of new and you kind of figure stuff out while you’re doing it. 2018 is going to be a good year I hope, I’m releasing my EP and getting to play shows, I’m really excited.”

1

“Make You Feel My Love” by Adele

“I sang this at my Mum’s wedding last summer. She loves it and I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful love song. It all depends on how you listen to it, in the wedding it was perfect for that moment, but it’s also a perfect heartbreak song. I think it’s beautiful when you can listen to a song on different levels. ‘Make You Feel My Love’ can be a sad, heart-breaking song, but it can also be a beautiful song about love, when you want to give one person your all and that’s what my Mum and my Step-Dad did for each other, so it means a lot to me.

“When I sang it at their wedding it was a beautiful moment. It was an outdoor wedding and we had the priest outside in a garden, it was gorgeous, a beautiful summer’s day. They wanted me to sing a song during the ceremony because I was my Mum’s main bridesmaid. When I went to music school I sang this song at one of my grading’s, my Mum was there when I sang it and I think it stuck with her, so she was like ‘What about that beautiful song you sang at school?’

“I love Adele, so I felt I like needed to have one Adele song on here. I think she writes beautiful ballads and she’s an incredible woman. Her voice is just beyond everything and she writes about heartbreak in the most beautiful way, I think she’s amazing. The first song of hers that I heard was ‘Chasing Pavements’ and I’ve been a fan of Adele ever since.”

2

“Novacane” by Frank Ocean

“When Frank Ocean came out with the Nostalgia, Ultra album I kind of copped it pretty early and I was just amazed at how he writes. I try to listen to the way he writes music and I can’t figure out if he has any rules that he follows, if he has any structure or if he just writes it and I think that’s incredible.

“I think I heard it for the first time in my first year of college, I was really into Hip-Hop and some friends of mine showed me his Nostalgia, Ultra album and I felt like I’d never heard anything like it before. Then I remember when Channel Orange came out, I was ‘this is incredible, who is this person? He’s a genius.’

“‘Novacane’ is a song that I can listen to forever, it’s my go to song, like always, and ‘Swim Good’ too, I think they’re incredible and he’s an incredible artist. He was so early with the electric sounds and the way that song is, it’s the way music is being made now, but he released it in 2011, he was so early.

"'It's my favourite song of his, it’s the topline and the production, it’s a sound that you could never get tired of, it’s an amazing song. ‘Novacane’ ,’Swim Good’ and Channel Orange made me want to make music like that, he inspires me so much.”

3

“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen

“My Dad used to play Queen all the time when I was a kid. When you’re a kid you don’t really listen to music, it’s just sounds and you think it’s cool, but I remember driving to our cabin once with my brother and my Dad and I was in the backseat. My Dad turned on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and it was the first time that I realised how much music amazed me, I was totally mesmerised in the backseat listening to this beautiful song.

“It’s such a strange song, its opera, rock and everything mixed into one. Freddie Mercury was the one who started the whole thing where you can mix different kinds of music that don’t really work together, but all music can work together and he shows that in this song, you can mix everything.

“It’s really long but I know every word of it. It’s my favourite song, the structure of it and how it was built is amazing. They released it as a single, which is insane, because you’d never believe it would be a huge hit, but sometimes people surprise you. People can be easy when it comes to music, they listen to things that make sense to them and this song doesn’t make sense, so it’s incredible that it did become that big, but it’s because it’s one of the best songs ever made.

“I was eight or nine years old when heard ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ properly, I’d heard it before, but that time in the car was the first time I realised music is more, hearing it, music made sense for the first time, how incredible it was. It was ‘this is just one song and it gives you all these feelings. You don’t know the person who wrote it and you don’t know anything about them, but in this song you can feel everything that person is saying and it makes you feel your own things.’

“I remember it was the first time I experienced music as music, not just sounds. I thought it was incredible how music worked and I’ve been amazed ever since.”

4

“Habits (Stay High)” by Tove Lo

“Tove Lo’s song-writing is so inspiring for me because it’s an unusual way of telling things, it’s honest and raw and I want to be that honest myself. With ‘Habits’ it’s the way it’s written, it’s so honest and has such unusual lyrics for a pop song. It’s her, she’s talking from herself and it’s not this pitch-perfect pop song about how a guy never loved you. It’s an honest song about how she deals with heartbreak.

“I always think about her Queen of the Clouds album, it’s one of the most amazing albums and one of my favourite albums ever. It’s the way she writes the songs, I love how honest she is, she’s not leaving things out because as a girl ‘you should behave like this or this’, she’s breaking all the barriers and just being herself and that’s so inspiring.

“When you hear that album you’re like ‘Shit, I’ve never heard a girl telling all these dirty secrets about herself before.’ It’s because as a girl you’re taught to be this or that way, you should be perfect and clean and look pretty, but no one’s like that, it’s lies. I think women now are much stronger and tired of being told who to be. I feel like there’s a change going on in the music business, women are taking the place that they deserve and just saying ‘Fuck you, I can do whatever I want, I can write about whatever I want and I can be whoever I want.’

“I first heard the remix of it, which was huge, but I was a bit late to this version. I think the album had been about for about five months before I found it and when I heard ‘Habits’ I was amazed by it, and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. She’s awesome.”

5

“Never Be Like You” by Flume feat. Kai

“This was the song I streamed the most last year and this year it’s my fifth most streamed song, I absolutely love it and I listen to it on repeat.

“I remember when I started making music I was always ‘Let’s listen to Flume! I want my songs to be like this.’ I don’t know how to explain it, it’s the way it sounded strange and cool, you knew you’d never heard anything like it before. I was amazed when he did this, it was new and it was cool. It’s a perfect, perfect pop song, the topline is perfect and the production is amazing.

“I keep listening to it because there are some songs you never grow tired of, like with all of these songs, but especially ‘Novacane’ and ‘Never Be Like You’, they’re the two songs that I never get tired of. When I hear them I’m like ‘How did you make this song?’ Usually you get tired of songs, but with this I think it’s just something about the topline that I never grow tired of it.

“If I forget ‘Never Be Like You’ and I don’t listen to it for maybe two months, when I listen to it again it’s like listening to it for the first time, it’s like ‘Wow, this song is so cool.’”

6

"Wildfire” by John Mayer feat. Frank Ocean

“I think ‘Wildfire’ is one of the saddest songs and that’s why I love it so much. He’s telling the story and then it’s like ‘Well, there’s nothing more to tell, so why try to push it?’ It’s only one and half minutes long and it’s beautiful. It’s so sad, but you don’t get sad listening to it, as he’s singing you get pictures in your head of what he’s saying.

“The production is almost nothing, there’s just a piano and voice, it’s so calm and it’s just a beautiful song, it’s the saddest song, it’s a mixture of everything. You understand that Frank Ocean is singing about a girl who’s really sad, but sometimes what’s beautiful with music is that you can listen to a lyric and even though you can’t relate to the words exactly, because you haven’t gone through the same things they’re talking about, that’s what makes music universal. You don’t need to relate to the words exactly, you just feel the mood of it and you can relate to it by getting that feeling the song gives you.

“Every time I hear this song it just takes me. I’m amazed every time I hear it, I can relate to those feelings I get when I hear it, they’re sad feelings, it’s one of the saddest songs I know.”

7

“Youth” by Daughter

“The lyrics in ‘Youth’ are so beautiful, it’s one of the most beautiful heartbreak songs I’ve ever heard. There’s a line I that absolutely love, ‘And if you're still breathing you're the lucky ones, because most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs.’ It’s like when you’ve gone through heartbreak and you know how bad it is, you’re like, ‘I never want to do that again.’

“Every word she uses is just perfect at describing that heart-breaking moment when you get your heart broken, it’s a perfectly written love song. I think my favourite line is ‘We're setting fire to our insides for fun’, because that explains exactly what you do, you’re setting fire to your insides when you fall in love and throw yourself out there, you know you’re going to get hurt but you still do it.

“I found it when I was looking through Spotify playlists about a year and a half ago. You know when listen to them and you skip through almost every song, just trying to find something? This one came on and I couldn’t stop listening to it. I thought it was so perfect, I was going through heartbreak at that moment and this song helped me through all of that. I feel like it’s a song that I’ll cherish forever for explaining what I was feeling at the moment.”

8

“Dance So Good” by Wakey!Wakey!

“I was a huge One Tree Hill fan. In one of the seasons there’s this guy, I don’t know if it’s one of Wakey!Wakey! who’s actually playing the character, but there’s this one character who’s an artist and he sings this song ‘Dance So Good.’ He sings a lot of songs from Wakey!Wakey!’s album Almost Everything I Wish I'd Said the Last Time I Saw You, which is a beautiful album name.

“It was me and my best friend who watched One Tree Hill together and this song became our favourite song. We always listened to it when we were young kids, trying to figure out life together. She’s still my closest best friend and this song reminds me of her and of our friendship, so that’s why it’s so important for me.

“I think me and my best friend were quite sad at this point! All we did was chill and watch One Tree Hill. We were becoming teenagers, which is hard, and I think we just related to this song, because sometimes you don’t need to talk, you can just listen to a song and dance. I think it’s when he says ‘Tell me why we’re talking when we dance so good?’ I just think that’s so beautiful.

“It’s a gorgeous song and it reminds me of my best friend and everything we’ve done together. She’s so important to me, so I had to have a song that reminded me of her in my most important songs.”

9

“Spis Din Syvende Sans” by Karpe Diem

“Karpe Diem are the biggest rap duo in Norway. I have so many favourite songs of theirs but I think this song is so cool, how it’s a rap song but with the instrumental it has, it’s so new and so unusual. Karpe Diem are so amazing that I feel bad for everyone that’s not Norwegian that can’t listen to them, because their music is so good, it’s incredible. Not on this song particularly, but they have this way of talking about important stuff like politics and immigration and still make a number one hit out of it.

“They’re so cool and amazing and they’ve been huge for ten years, which is an unusually long period. They have an album they released two years ago and a couple of weeks ago they released a movie in the cinemas for one weekend just to top it off, everything they do is so thought through.

“They don’t do anything halfway, they do things one hundred percent; their live shows are incredible, everything they do is just amazing and that’s really inspiring for me, always doing your best and never settling for less than you want, where everything you envision you try as hard as you can to get it where you want it to be.”