Exclusive Track Premiere: ‘Start a War,’ Anna Rose
ABOVE: ANNA ROSE. PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHERVIN LAINEZ.
“Don’t need a reason / Don’t need a cause / So far away from the paths we crossed … Everybody’s coming for you / Everyone is trying to start a war,” singer/songwriter Anna Rose sings on her single “Start a War.” Premiering below, the song is fueled by Rose’s serene voice, a simple guitar, and soothing percussion. Though it began as heavy rock, the musician and cowriters Jordan Lawhead and Adam B. Smith decided to strip it down, giving the song an almost purely acoustic soundscape; it acts as the calm after the storm.
When writing the song, “I was feeling particularly isolated as a long-term visitor in Nashville, missing my fiancé (now husband), and everything felt like an attack on my senses,” Rose says. “I was always geared up for a fight. I was fighting for my career, thinking about how I could have done things differently. I felt very alone and misunderstood in a lot of ways.”
“Start a War” is from Rose’s forthcoming six-track EP Strays in the Cut, the majority of which she wrote during a trip to Nashville, instead of in her native New York. “I’ve been thinking of this EP like a short film,” she continues. “It has the same emotional content and story arc as a full-length album, it’s just leaner and meaner…A lot of this EP [is] about redefinition and finding comfort in the discomfort of being alone.” Following Strays in the Cut, Rose plans on releasing a second EP to act as a “partner in crime” rather than another LP (she previously released Behold a Pale Horse and Nomad).
“I want people to find their own meaning in the songs,” Rose continues. “It doesn’t matter why I wrote them or what I think they’re about. What matters to me is that the listener takes the song as their own and subscribes their own meaning to it. That’s the highest honor.”
STRAYS IN THE CUT IS DUE OUT NEXT YEAR. ANNA ROSE WILL PLAY AT BROOKLYN BOWL IN NEW YORK ON JANUARY 27, 2016. FOR MORE ON THE MUSICIAN, VISIT HER FACEBOOK.
