Anna Carol: ‘My music is always in motion’

NUOVO IMAIE offers a series of meetings with protagonists of the Italian music scene to talk about their projects, but also to delve deeper into the dynamics that revolve around being an Artist, Performer, Performer.

If you ask her to introduce herself, she replies that she is “a singer-songwriter who has had a long journey of experimentation in Northern Europe and who then returned to her culture of birth and started writing again in her native language, Italian”. Anna Carol, in reality, is much more than this. Born in 1992, he began with jazz, a genre he approached while living abroad and which he perfected with masterclasses at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York. Then the return to her origins, in fact, with an approach closer to pop songwriting: her second album, “Principianti”, was released in 2025 and took her to the May Day stage and on tour throughout the peninsula. Furthermore, a new unreleased single arrived a few weeks ago, “Invoce di stare con te” in collaboration with Dente.

SI grew up in Italy, but in a unique city of its kind: Bolzano. What’s the music scene like there?

Being born in this place for me meant being very open to the influences of what comes from outside. Being a border place, it pushed me towards different cultures and certainly also towards the search for an identity. And then it left me with the curiosity to see what was happening in the bigger cities. Growing up it was difficult to find other people who had a visceral passion for music like mine, so I was always on the move a lot.

What did you find abroad, in terms of stimuli and inspiration?

From a certain point of view I found above all what did not belong to me. After these seven years between Germany, London and Rotterdam I realized that I missed Italy and what it represented. But it gave me the opportunity to experiment, to understand many other ways of living life and then also to apply this new cognition to art, to my identity. Furthermore, it allowed me to explore new genres that I was less familiar with.

In fact, although your apparent point of reference is Italian songwriting, among your influences you always cite many other traditionally foreign genres…

The first genre I threw myself into was jazz. For many years I was obsessed with it, because in some way I felt I recognized myself in it and at the same time it was very far from me. From jazz I moved on to soul and R&B, which not surprisingly were widely listened to in Northern Europe. In the end I returned to pop, my starting point together with songwriting. In my childhood I listened to a lot of Lucio Dalla, Luca Carboni, Elisa, Giorgia, and it was nice to rediscover everything I had missed in the seven years I lived abroad.

Including the explosion of Italian indie pop, in fact. Among your regular collaborators there are many reference points of our home indie: Federico Dragogna, Selton…

I’ve noticed that I end up trusting someone musically especially when I trust the person behind it. I think that in some way the affinities also enter the songs by osmosis, also for the atmosphere that can be created during rehearsals and working. I met Federico almost by chance: he had listened to my first album, he liked it a lot and he understood the direction I wanted to take for the second album, everything started very naturally from there. Together with him we understood that Selton would be the perfect band to bring into the studio with us, because on a musical level we had several points in common.

It’s often said that 2025 was the year of the songwriter. You who are unequivocally involved, what do you think?

I always find it difficult to put a label on what I do: it also depends on what we mean when we talk about songwriting. Regardless of this, however, I think there is a great desire to listen to the truth in songs, and that exposing oneself in one’s lyrics can have added value, can be an even more powerful, authentic and tangible act. And people sense it.

Among other things, speaking of writing, you also added a book to your latest recording project…

On the one hand it was almost a game: it started from the desire to leave something concrete to those who came to the concerts. There were many stories that had inspired the record in some way: the album itself, Beginnerstakes its name from a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver. I wanted to give space to the narratives that hadn’t managed to make it into the songs, but which were part of them or could be part of them. With a dear friend of mine, the philosopher and writer Sonia Lisco, we had the idea of ​​creating a collection of stories inspired by the songs, but which could have a life of its own, which we then also combined with photographs. A good way to also fill the waiting time between the release of one album and the next, which is usually quite long.

In addition to being a songwriter, you are also a 360-degree performer. NuovoIMAIE has always worked to protect performing artists: what importance did the awareness of having rights that you can assert in this area have for you, as an emerging artist?

Related rights are often not talked about much, but for me, at the time, learning of their existence was a discovery and a novelty: not everyone has the opportunity to delve deeper, perhaps because there is someone else who deals with the matter for you, but I believe it is important to be aware of what you are entitled to and what tools are at your disposal, especially for young artists, who have yet to undertake a more structured path.

And speaking of the route: what awaits you next?

I’m preparing for the upcoming autumn club tour dates. After the summer period I would like to return to the rehearsal room with my band and work on the live set and the show, something I really like to do because it takes me back to my origins. I started making music in a room and experimenting with songs, trying to rearrange them: it’s nice to start from there.