Meet Annie Hamilton
Name: Annie Hamilton
Star Sign: Sagittarius
Sunrise or sunset? Sunset
Who is your dream collab artist: Bjork
My spirit animal is: Bat !!!!
What decade of music do you wish you could live in and release music in?
Honestly I think now... I love so much older music and draw so much inspiration from it but the total wild west blend of genre and influence and innovation that is happening right now in music is so exciting to me. It's also never been easier to make and release music independently, which is really important to me. It's never been a better time to be a woman in music either. There's a lot of cynicism and pessimism floating around the music industry at the moment but honestly I feel energized and optimistic. I think it's only going to get better.
Would you rather be a rockstar or a witch with endless powers except the power to become a rockstar?
Hahaha definitely a witch. Rockstarism is overrated.
Do you find it easier to write songs in collaboration or on your own?
On my own for sure. My usual writing process is extremely private. I don't usually show anyone the songs until I've done as much of the production that I can... I enjoy writing with other people when it's for their own projects, but I get absolutely blocked when trying to write for my own project with other people. I'd like to get better at it though.
Tell us why you're so batty for bats.
I love bats. I always loved watching them fly over my house every night when I was little. During the covid lockdowns I would go out into my courtyard every sunset to watch the bats fly over my house. It became a bit of a nightly ritual that started seeping into my writing. They started appearing in all my songs. Not even as symbols, but really literally. There's a song on my last album called Bad Trip and the chorus goes, "and now the bats are flying laps around the loungeroom, tried to catch them but I found you sleeping on the mattress, got distracted" - I wrote this about being in my grandparents' house in the mountains and there was a pair of microbats that would break in and fly around the loungeroom every night. I had to stand on the kitchen table and catch them in a tea-towel to let them out. So all this bat imagery was invading my work and I just went with it. I just love them, they're so cute and weird and alien. I have a taxidermy bat hanging on my wall, everyone else hates him but I love him <3
You sing, play instruments, illustrate, graphic design- if you could only do one for the rest of your life which would you choose and why?
That's a hard question because I love it all but the music is always the centre of it, so definitely the music. I think of the visuals and the graphics as being tools to help communicate the universe that the music lives in, but the music always comes first.
Annie Hamilton’s debut album ‘Stop and Smell the Lightning’ is out now.
