Introducing Anna Bates
In yet another sign-of-the-times Zoom interview, I got the chance to catch up with rising star, Anna Bates. Bates’ clever lyrics, stylistic versatility, and dreamy arrangements defy classification and undoubtedly warrant a listen… or several. Read on to find out about this promising singer-songwriter’s story and the inspiration behind the fresh sounds on each of her genre-bending singles.
Anna: Hey we got it to work!
Claire: Awesome I’m so glad, I’ve been so excited to finally meet you!
A: Thanks! My Wi-Fi has been whacked out, I had another meeting earlier this morning so just let me know if at any point it’s super laggy…
C: Classic Zoom. So before we both lose connection let’s jump right in: tell me about yourself.
A: Yeah! So you obviously already know my name [laughs]… I’m like trying to filter out what you don’t need to know, what you want to know—
C: I want to know all of it!
A: Well I’m 21, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I moved out to Nashville for a little bit for school over at Belmont University. And then now I’m back in L.A. so I’ve done a lot of traveling. I fell into music accidentally as a kid at like eight, my dad bought a keyboard and I was like, “Yeah let me try that.” Both of my parents are nurses so doing music for me was kind of out of the blue because I didn’t have any family in entertainment or music at all. They were probably a little freaked out when I was like, “I’m going to college for songwriting.” So I thought I wanted to do movie scoring for a long time, then I started writing poetry shortly after that and I was like “Oh man, I really love writing but I don’t have the patience to write a novel,” and I also couldn’t put the music down. So I decided I was going to combine both of them and started writing lyrics and that’s how I fell into songwriting and really fell in love with it. But it always kind of felt like it was not a stable job, like I was going to need some sort of a backup plan.
C: Is that coming from you… or maybe your parents?
A: Actually, they’ve been so supportive! I’m always the one who’s like “I need a backup plan, like I need something that’s gong to pay for healthcare,” you know? It was totally a me thing. I think it was influenced by both my parents having stable income and being able to take care of me most of my life and I really admired that because they worked really, really hard. So over the summer I was working in Wyoming to get a degree in forestry or environmental science and do songwriting on the side. And then right before I was supposed to leave is when all the TikTok stuff blew up so I was stuck in the cabin with no Wi-Fi and my mom was like, “Do you really think now is the best time for you to be going to Wyoming?” So then I quit that job and now we’re here and it’s… quite a thing.
C: It definitely is. I’m curious – what kind of poetry do you like to read?
A: Oh goodness, to be honest everything under the sun, but definitely satirical poetry. I know this sounds horrible but don’t like paying a lot for books, which is awful because I want to support the authors and they deserve all of that support but I’ve found some true gems in some thrift stores. I actually have some right here next to me—I Care About Your Happiness… great one.
C: I can only assume that impacted your songwriting at least a little [laughs]. How did you make the leaps from poetry to writing your own, then translating that to lyrics?
A: Yeah so I’ve always loved storytelling, like I joke around that I get to lie when I’m doing it. I thought it was awesome to be able to use music to enhance an already amazing art form. So I started writing short stories and poetry about stuff I would make up in my head or pictures I’d see online or based off of movies or TV shows or whatever. And then from there, I started putting it into music. I also grew up listening to Owl City and all these electronic artists—
C: Throwback!
A: Yeah! It was back in the day when everybody was posting on MySpace and I just thought it was so cool that there was just some dude in his basement in his early 20’s making cool songs. And that’s how I fell into production and producing a lot of my music. So it was a weird meeting in the middle, I loved to read—I didn’t have a TV or any electronics in my house until I was 16 or 17 years old—and this other musical aspect of my life. And as I grew older it was only natural that they both converged.
C: Wow that’s so cool. So no TV or anything growing up you said?
A: Yeah, I didn’t get a cell phone until I was like a junior in high school.
C: That’s really unique. In retrospect, how do you think that influenced you, if at all?
A: It definitely did, it had a big impact on my creativity I think. I grew up going outside a lot, camping, fishing, and being in the outdoors, and finding other ways to kind of fill the void the way the TV does. I was also an only child for the first 10 years of my life so I talked to myself a lot. I was like a weird, odd hermit child.
C: Hey give the only children some credit! I wasn’t an only child and my imagination is seriously lacking, but yours really comes out in your songs. When did you first start writing your own music? It seems like you knew you wanted to go into it or at least study it since you were looking into movie composition, so how did that all come to be as you were growing up?
A: I would say probably by 8 or 9 years old I was writing a lot of my own stuff. I was learning out of these plastic-bound hymnals my dad bought. And my mom has epilepsy and she couldn’t drive so she put me in piano lessons with a couple of my friends so she could hang out with their moms during that time because that was the only time she could go somewhere. So then I fell into hardcore classical piano lessons and my teacher was the bomb. And I mean I love classical music, but the technicality of playing it made me feel like no, break the rules! In elementary school, they had a competition for the arts and I would submit my poetry, art, and music. And my music always did really well.
C: Understandably.
A: But it was never with words, it was always instrumental and I won a couple of cheesy medals and thought it was just so cool. So that’s kind of how that happened.
C: So what made you decide to put your music out onto streaming services and how did you go about that?
A: I think it was around 2016 when I discovered what SoundCloud was, and I had started really writing my own songs with words and got a computer at the same time. So I started putting my own random electronic stuff on there and that’s how I first decided to start putting my music on the internet for people to listen to. Nobody did of course, it was like five streams from my grandparents who lived across the country. But then I got to college and I was surrounded by other serious songwriters out in Nashville who just had this crazy amount of artistry and were playing shows. So I felt this pressure to put something out, but I actually didn’t put anything out until November of last year after I had a messy romantic summer. So then I wanted to write a song about it and have it blow up which didn’t end up happening for that one at least.
C: Was that Out on the Line?
A: Yep. Margot was actually written before Out on the Line. Margot was the name of my ex-boyfriend’s van and we took a camping trip in it from New Jersey to Maine. It was a blast and I loved that van… probably more than I loved that man which is why it didn’t work out. Great guy, very nice, just was not for me. So that was a love song and an ode to a vehicle, not the person, which probably should’ve been a red flag on his side towards me. Do you want the whole spiel for Out on the Line?
C: Absolutely, spill.
A: There was a guy I went to high school with and I just thought he was really cool. I was terrified of him—I was really nerdy in high school, I was in orchestra and that was like my entire personality. He actually lived up the street for me and right after I returned from that van trip, he posted on social media that he had some extra clothes he was giving away. “They’re on my porch, come get them,” was basically the message. So I was like, “Um… ok!” So I show up later that night and there are no clothes, so I call him and he says he’s washing them because he doesn’t want them to be musty, and that he’ll bring them out to me. So I’m sweating profusely in anticipation of seeing my high school crush… and from then on we just hung out all the time because we lived so close. I developed a disgusting amount of feelings for this man, he didn’t even seem human.
C: That’s a great feeling but I’m waiting for the “but…”
A: It comes, don’t worry. So for a solid four months we’re talking and hanging out almost every day. And then one day, I don’t hear from him at all. House was sold, he was gone. And I was just like, “What in the world?”
C: That’s insane!
A: Yeah! He just vanished. I could not get in contact with him—I was worried about his wellbeing! So I wrote that song, Out on the Line, and was almost hoping that his friends would hear it, know it was about him, then pass it on. But—
C: Another but?!
A: Yes—three months later he texts me and tells me he went back to school in Arizona. But we hashed it out and became really great friends. So it’s hilarious because now that song is out there and he’s one of my closest friends in the whole world who has been there for me while all this TikTok stuff has been exploding. He’s a great guy so it’s just a joke at this point that like some form of hate music has been written about him.
C: Well I’m glad you guys got that sorted out. And that you’re both so close! After hearing about these two I have to know: what’s the backstory behind Holy Smokes?
A: I actually got assigned it for a writing class. My teacher sent us a picture and told us we had to write a story about it. She sent me a picture of an empty room and it reminded me of some of the empty houses down by the beach near Venice. So I wrote this really absurd story right before class—because professional procrastination is my side hustle—about these guys that you see on the street corners in Venice. And they are all 6’2” guys, very handsome, trying to sell you drugs.
C: No fair. How could you turn that down?
A: Exactly! And I kid you not they look like how Westerners cast Jesus. There’s no difference. Like if you take Jesus out of a Western film and put him next to the guy on the street corner, you will not be able to tell them apart, right down to their weird white tunics. And my professor thought it was hilarious and told me to make a song about it, and that’s how the verses came to be. The chorus was a different story. I had grown up in a very Christian household—which made trying to explain Holy Smokes a little difficult—and when I first got to college I was surrounded by these people who were no strangers to drinking and smoking. So in my first year boy did I drink, and boy did I smoke weed. My first time smoking weed was with my friend and his dad in their garage out of like a paint can. And his dad ironically looks exactly like a Venice Jesus.
C: Naturally.
A: Right? And one night I got way too high, I was losing my mind. I literally thought I was going to die. So I go to the E.R. and the nurses are all pissed off at another stoner in their midst. But getting that high was where this chorus came from—I was hallucinating and thought I was going to die and go to heaven and see my grandmother and all of these dead people I had grown up hearing about in church. So it was sort of a marriage of my childhood of Bible stories and me growing up and deciding that becoming a stoner for part of my life was an awesome idea, and then being surrounded by stoner culture down at Venice Beach. Did any of that make sense?
C: Yes! All of it did, it’s fascinating to know what goes on behind the scenes and your where inspiration comes from. What’s also fascinating is the contrast between how hilarious the lyrics are and how neatly everything was arranged. You mentioned you produce your own tracks—what was that creative process like?
A: Since it was already on TikTok and people liked it with just the vocal and guitar, I decided to keep the arrangement on Holy Smokes really simple. I recorded voice notes in my friend’s bedroom with two different mics feeding into Pro Tools, and it was just guitar and a little bongo drum. Super simple, it was nothing fancy. Definitely different from what I normally like to do, whereas Margot and Out on the Line have more electronic guitar. I do a lot of stuff through my keyboard and through MIDI, and it’s kind of a guess. It’s an experimentation which I love because I get to play around with so many different sounds, and that’s the part that I really like about production. And it comes to be this like weird Western/folk/surf/bedroom… I don’t know how you’d even describe it. I love to use a lot of drones and dreamy elements—just weird sounds. Whatever I can stick in there that I haven’t heard before, I’ll put in.
C: Amazing. I’m so excited about the variety you’re able to pull off and how your music seems to really be taking off so I can’t help but ask: what’s next?
A: The numbers have kind of always scared me so I try to not focus on the streams. But it’s exciting to see! I have a great manager named Will, he has some sessions for me in the works. I think I’m going to end up putting out a string of singles, and then working on an EP and an album after that. I’m hoping it’s going to be very story-based, kind of like Holy Smokes. Probably a few more folk songs and more produced songs depending on what I feel like. You know, Will could call me tomorrow and be like “This all sucks!” I don’t think he will but he could and the project could completely change. But that’s kind of the long-term plan right now.
C: Wow. And have people been reaching out to you and Will?
A: Yeah, a lot. It’s weird because labels started coming out of the woodwork randomly, which is why Will has been a lifesaver. We haven’t decided on a label or whether I should stick to being an Indie artist which I love because freedom is an awesome thing, but so is money!
C: Well whichever route you pick I know you’re going to make the most of it and I can’t wait to see and hear more.
All three singles featured here are available to stream on Spotify.
Don’t leave us out on the line, follow Anna on Instagram at:
Photos taken by Anna Bates herself.
