Interview: Navigating Uncertainty With Annie Blackman

The Brooklyn, New York singer-songwriter sat down with Afterglow to discuss her recording process, musical inspirations, and her latest EP, Bug.

Written by Audrey Vieira

Photo courtesy of Tonje Thilesen

Brooklyn singer-songwriter Annie Blackman’s knack for storytelling shines in her detailed explorations of uncertainty, which caught the attention of Father/Daughter Records in 2021 after she began uploading original songs to TikTok in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. She went on to release the self-recorded album All Of It the following year before entering a studio for the first time in summer 2022 to record her latest EP, Bug. Afterglow sat down with Blackman to discuss the recording process, her musical inspirations, and experience of writing lyrics on various modes of transit.

Afterglow: You went viral on TikTok with “Seeds” in 2020, signed to Father/Daughter the following year, and recently performed at their SXSW showcase. How have you navigated the transition from performing new songs on social media to playing them for festival audiences?

I don't really create a mental separation between the audience online and the audience in real life. I feel like my focus is just giving the best performance of the song that I can, whether that's on TikTok, or onstage and the rest is out of my control. So I think I sort of just try to treat all the performances the same and then see what happens. It's more fun to perform on a stage in front of real people, like at a festival, but TikTok has its perks as well. It's like a very flattering comment section. But I feel like I have supportive friends and family whose words of praise are even more meaningful. I feel like across the board, there are things that make it feel like a similar experience.

Listening to the Bug EP, I recognized parts of some tracks — the singles “Ash” and the title track, but also “The Well” and “Altitude” — from snippets you performed on TikTok in spring and summer of last year. How does it feel to tease new music during the recording process as opposed to right before release?

I think teasing music during the recording process feels like a bit of a focus group. Like, I'm taking a bit of a song that I'm working on that I can't even imagine in its final form yet because it's not completely written. And even though going viral on Tiktok is a shot in the dark no matter what, and I know that the reception of a teased song isn't even indicative of what the greater response will be post-release, it does sort of help me test the waters a little bit. And if I post a song, and even if it's only like four comments of people being like, "Oh, I like this," I'm like, okay, someone has something nice to say about it. That's a good sign. But teasing it once it's done, once the release is on the calendar is definitely more fun. It's also less pressure because it's like, well, it's done now, no matter what anyone has to say about it. It's done.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Because I know especially with “Altitude,” there was one TikTok of yours I saw where you were still workshopping title ideas for it, and I found that really interesting because, like, to me, it seems like it always would have been called "Altitude."

I think it's also just fun to have some sort of audience engagement. And, yeah, I think it makes people feel like — not to sound like a social media mastermind — but I think it makes people feel like they're a part of the process ... I am open to people's suggestions …  and even though it ended up being something that was a little bit more intuitive, and that I had maybe an idea of beforehand, it's cool to see what people who like my music have to say about it. If someone supports me, I am super open to any idea that they have. That goes for my friends and family too. Like, I asked my friends for suggestions on song titles and my friend Jack actually created the track order of the EP. So I think it's cool to step outside my own head for some of the more technical aspects of releasing.

How long has this EP been in the works?

I don't even know when I started writing the first song on it, but as we were sort of getting towards the end of releasing the waterfall of singles from the album in 2022 ... I wanted to get ahead of the next project a little bit. So at that point, most of them were written and it was just a matter of scheduling studio time and coming up with arrangements with my producer and my collaborators. It felt like it really started when I got in the studio, and yeah, that was last summer.

The Bug EP is also your first release recorded in a studio. How was that experience different from previous recording sessions?

It was way better. I made all of the record in my parents’ house during lockdown. I bought a microphone for it, my dad and I set up this makeshift studio space with PVC pipes and blankets to create a dead sound environment, and I engineered the whole thing. So I just recorded it and was messing with the game the whole time, and it was a real headache to say the least. I would do two different takes and be like, "Why do these two sound completely different from each other, even though all of the circumstances were the exact same?" And I think that sort of stress made the recording process less fun knowing that I had so much responsibility coupled with so little experience. Being in a studio at Better Company Studios with Allen Tate, who engineered and mixed the whole thing, was such a load off. I was able to enjoy singing and playing guitar more because I wasn't worried about the technical aspects of it. It made a huge difference.

On TikTok, you mentioned writing “Altitude” on a plane. Going off that experience, where do you usually find yourself writing songs?

A lot of times, I feel like I'm writing them while I'm in physical transit, like, you know, when I'm on a plane, and I don't have access to the internet, and I have my phone which is a distraction in its own right. But it's also like, I just have this notepad on my phone, but I'm able to sort of be like, "Okay, there's nothing else to do right now." And I'm also coming off of this experience, and I have all of these thoughts and stuff. So while I'm between places, this is sort of my time to zone in and that was true for being on the plane writing that song. But it's also true for when I'm on the subway or on NJ Transit on the train to visit my parents in New Jersey. I feel like when I'm in this liminal space, it's easier to zoom in on different ideas that I have.

How do you decide which details to emphasize in your lyrics?

I feel like there are always lots of details to pull from. So it sort of will start as like, you know, there's so many. When I was writing "Altitude," I was like, Okay, this is set on a plane, there are a million things that happen on a plane that I could reference, but how do I pick the details that service not only the intent of the song, but also like, how do I fit specificity into a coherent rhyme scheme into the right syntactic rise and fall of a lyric? It's the puzzle solving aspect of songwriting that can dictate what details fit in because I might want to reference something, but if it doesn't rhyme and it doesn't make sense, then I have to pick a different detail. So I think it's sort of like a process of elimination.

Who are your favorite influences, production-wise or lyric-wise?

My favorite album when I was writing the record, but also this EP is/was Katie Kirby's Cool Dry Place, which I've talked about before. I just love that album so much. And then also ... I'm a big Pinegrove head. Skullcrusher is great. I love Sydney Gish. Her wordplay is some of my absolute favorite in music, period. Andy Shauf, he's an amazing storyteller. I'm a big fan of concept [albums] and very narrative albums.

Another theme I notice a lot throughout Bug, especially on the title track, is this idea of the situationship and the uncertainty that comes with the lack of definition. What inspires you to explore this uncertainty?

I think that writing a song is the way of working out any feeling. So I think that the inspiration behind that is like, "How is this story that I want to tell going to heal me?" It's like a very self-involved venture at the end of the day. It's like, I'm, you know, I wish I could say that some of the songs that I'm writing are for the greater good, or that I'm writing about climate change, or, you know, pro-union songs, but it really is just [that] I'm taking a raw feeling of my own and I'm trying to channel that in a way that I can sort of process it and then release it into the world. And I think that's usually what motivates the exploration of those feelings.

What kinds of projects are you looking forward to exploring in the future?

I am definitely looking forward to being in a studio again and just like writing more. There are more albums for me to put out, for sure, not that [they] are remotely done or written at this point, but all I can do is keep writing and keep experiencing things that make me feel sad or weird or happy or good or whatever and you know, performing more, hoping to book some support tours this year and next year. But yeah, all any of us can do is just try to keep writing.

You can follow Annie Blackman on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, and stream her new EP Bug on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp.

This interview has been minimally edited for clarity and length.