Anna Nalick

Welcome to Anna Nalick Website!

"Ever since I was a little girl I just knew I wanted to be a performer. My earliest inspiration came from my grandparents; they both performed on Broadway." -Anna Nalick.

You can thank Anna Nalick's grandparents. They may not be responsible for the talent that the surprisingly mature young singer/songwriter shows on her gorgeous debut album Wreck of the Day, but they helped to plant the seed. The result is a refreshing blend of sophisticated wordplay, haunting melodies, sublime textures and atmosphere. With all music and lyrics written by Anna, Wreck of the Day signals the arrival of an unmistakable new voice in pop music, full of youthful exuberance and provocative reflection.
Anna Nalick was born on March 30, 1984, and grew up in Glendora, California, near Pasadena. "A town with a main street with an ice cream shop," is how she describes it, "like out of 'Back to the Future.' " When Anna was 14, her father turned her on to the sounds of Elvis and the Everly Brothers, while her mother spun disks for Anna by artists like the Rolling Stones, Cream, and Led Zeppelin. However, Nalick grew up hearing show biz tales from her grandparents, who were stage performers in the early 1900s. While they were never stars, Anna's grandmother worked with the likes of Fred Astaire and the Marx Brothers. Anna's grandmother tales of classic old school "show business" instilled in Anna the passionate desire to become a performer herself. Those tales inspired her to want to travel and to want to entertain people. So even as a young girl, Nalick was seduced by the power of performing, the power of the stage and song writing. Her dream was to be a performer. As she grew older, Nalick realized that music was the outlet to reach this dream. Nalick has been singing almost all her life, but became scared of crowds while in her early teens.

"I wasn't shy until I first performed in front of a lot of people and it was at a fourth-of-July parade," she says. "I sang the national anthem and the person I had a crush on was in the crowd."

Early indications of her developing into a future songwriter appeared before she finished grade school, as she would rewrite the lyrics to popular songs she liked during class time. She soon took up the guitar and learned to compose melodies based on others she'd heard, and couple those with the lyrics she had written to create her own slightly sampled songs.
During high school, music began taking up more of Nalick's time. Anna marks the approximate beginnings of her song writing career with memories of 5th grade math class when she was sitting and rewriting lyrics to a Cranberries' song. She'd also pick out bass notes on guitar. She understood that she could put that all together and write her own melodies.
She wrote music for a local ska band. She just liked writing music for whatever the genre was. She continued to develop her song writing craft, which had become increasingly original, and also began performing, live with a local rock group. She was developing as a live performer, singing on-stage with a Rush cover band. With her best guy friend she was playing hard rock songs. She wrote music, sang lead in the band, she had to be "really angry and do a lot of screaming" with another group that played hard rock and heavy metal tunes. When she was in the Rush cover band, it was actually as a means for trying her out. While she gained valuable stage and performance experience, She understood that metal covers were a far cry from Anna's true musical calling. Moreover, it started affecting her writing in a negative way. She had her mind set on playing her original compositions.
Following high school, Nalick entered college with intentions to complete her studies and then pursue her dream of a musical career. It was her original plan. She began documenting and recording demos of her songs on her inexpensive Rainbow Brite girlhood toy tape cassette recorder, hoping they would further her chances of getting discovered.
She met a photographer who also taught at a high school in her area, and gave him a six-track lo-fi home demo after he told her that he had a student with parents in the music industry. As it turned out, her tapes ended up in the hands of former Blind Melon members Christopher Thorn and Brad Smith. The two were now a production team and with Eric Rosse -- a producer who had worked with another Nalick fave, Tori Amos - they re-recorded her home demos in a professional studio.
Nalick's newly mastered demo was then shopped around to a few record labels. Two weeks later, Columbia Records contacted Nalick with an offer and soon college was put on hold. Columbia Records signed her in October 2003 Records and started working on her debut CD with a respected group of studio musicians including Smith on bass, Thorn on guitar, Rosse, Zak Rae (Alanis Morissette, Macy Gray) on keyboards, Lyle Workman (Sheryl Crow, They Might Be Giants), Stuart Mathis (Jewel) on guitar, Joey Waronker (Johnny Cash, Beck) and Matt Chamberlain (Tori Amos, John Mayer) on drums. A few weeks before the official release date, the buzz has already started to grow. "Breathe" - the first single is starting to get some airplay. Nalick's music is being used on TV. Her face is even showing up on a coffee package. That was actually a great promotional tool.

Anna has been writing music since she was a little girl, so by the time she got into the studio she had years of songs to choose from. Of course, she had to limit my choices; there was a lot to condense into only 11 songs. This was a real challenge. "The album's been done for almost a year so I've had the time to prepare myself for this," she explains, speaking to andPOP in March while in Toronto for Canadian Music Week. With an all-star cast of studio musicians, the 20-year-old recorded her debut, Wreck of the Day. The release date of her debut album, originally slated for January 2005, was pushed to April; Wreck of the Day, finally saw the light of day on April 19, and received generally positive reviews. Wreck of the Day is a collection of 11 songs matching Anna's deeply resonant vocals with finely etched keyboard and guitar-based settings. She touches on a lot of big things, in a personal and engaging way, and invites the world to join her.
The finished product is a wonderfully assured musical statement for a woman of only twenty. She's already getting compared to everyone from Paul Simon (just not as manly-sounding) to Michelle Branch (but more emotional, and with tighter lyrics). However, she doesn't mind all the comparisons, as long as people realize her music is "lyric driven." "Breathe (2 A.M.)," the opening song (and first single) is a lovely meditation on loneliness that could definitely become a huge left field hit along the lines of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" if some adventurous program directors just give it a chance. The delicate title track is a wonderfully resigned love-gone-wrong ballad in which she defies her heart saying, "if this is giving up, then I'm giving up on love." More upbeat songs like "Paper Bag" and "Satellite" soothe the pain with Nalick's confident vocals sounding like those of a pro who has been recording for years.
Anna Nalick is very proud of Wreck of The Day because it is completely true to herself. She's allowed to be brutally honest in her song writing. She toured with The Wallflowers, childhood heroes of hers, during the early part of the summer, and with Howie Day in July and August of 2005. Nalick hopes to keep touring and would love to be successful, but she admits to having one big goal that rises above all others.

"I just want the opportunity to make another album."

Her songs have a very classic sound, something that a lot of people can relate to. Anna thinks that a strong melody is important, but she put most of my focus into the lyrics. That’s her favourite part of writing! "Writing for me is very healing." Yes, her music is "lyric driven". Anna wrote her songs in their entirety. She drew inspiration from all sorts of things. The songs on Wreck of the Day are thematically based on human emotion. Anna never felt a lack of inspiration to write. There's always something to write about, not necessarily about her personal experiences, but sometimes just observations of situations or relationships of different people she has known. But, the feelings she get are always personal. She never felt like she's missing it. "I could probably write a song just about any time and it's always going to do something good for me." All her songs are intimate and heartfelt, full of spiritual approach. "I do realize that I'm making myself vulnerable to a lot of people. That's been a blessing in a lot of ways, because it's helped me to realize that there's really nobody I need to scare of, nobody who should be intimidating to me. Because I don't know that I've ever met anyone who hasn't experienced love gone bad, or hasn't experienced heartache, or even falling in love. So it's a way of connecting to a lot of people." - Anna Nalick

It is not often that a brilliant young singer gets to work with her chief influences on her first shot out of the park, but Anna Nalick's irresistible blend of crispy poetic lyrics, haunting melodies, rich sense of harmony, and ethereal ambience merits nothing less.
Showing a wide range of influences running from Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, with whom she shares a feminine poignancy and singer-songwriter gamut, with streaks of Jewel and Alanis Morissette spiking out; to Blind Melon and John Mayer, whose adroit poetic paradoxes reverberate in her songs; to Stevie Ray Vaughan, Anna generates a sound and sensibility distinctly her own. There's a naturalness and urgency to her singing that saves every chorus and verse from clouding over. Now that she's cautiously alighted into pop territory, sophisticated listeners will do well to dust off their welcome mats. Anna Nalick also listens to a lot of Frank Sinatra. She loves old Gershwin tunes and Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. She likes a lot of the old jazz standards. Right now she is listening to Switchfoot, Keane, the Killers and Jet. She likes to listen to whatever's out. If you were to go to Anna's stereo, you would find CD's of Keane, Five For Fighting, The Mooney Suzuki, Billie Holiday, and Frou Frou. Anna's success shows that everything is possible in your life, you just have to desire it. You'll never know if you'll make it or not unless you try. She always gives a piece of advice to aspiring singers "Use your talents at every given opportunity and do it because it makes you happy."