Hailing from the prestigious Birla family, Ananya Birla could have easily taken the predictable path, but the young girl decided to pursue her passion — music — instead. “I respect and admire my family, but they’ve never expected me to walk in their footsteps. I am my own person with my own experiences, personality, and definition of success. There were certainly more conventional and predictable paths that I could have taken in life, but I believe in being true to oneself and following the thing that sets your soul on fire. For me, that is music,” says Ananya. The singer-composer, with three singles behind her, is now out with Circles, a song dedicated to friendship. Over to Ananya...
Friendship tales
Circles is a song which celebrates true friendship. I believe that friendship is life’s most precious and amazing gift and an incredibly powerful force. It’s a song I wrote for my best friend. I wanted to say thank you to the person who has been with me through all the ups and downs. The sound is different from Meant To Be and Hold On. It has a much more stripped-back and acoustic vibe which I hope people will enjoy.
Influences and experiments
Since I started performing live in London, back when I was at university, up until now, I have learned so much. As much as ever, I continue to be influenced by all the places that I go to and the people that I meet and work with. I am definitely still experimenting with my sound. I think Circles is quite different to my previous releases. I don’t feel the need to conform to any labels or genres, I’m focused on expressing myself and going where the music takes me. What connects all of my music is that it is all authentic and emotionally driven. I am inspired by my own experiences, or those that I hear from the people I meet around the world which resonate with me. I then work with producers and topliners to turn the experience into something which is more universally relatable. I am particularly inspired by love and stories of overcoming adversity.
On collaborations
I’ve been lucky enough to work with people like Afrojack and Mood Melodies and learned so much from them. Teaming-up with someone else forces you to consider your sound from the audience’s perspective, and it can help you turn a very personal and individual idea into something more accessible to all sorts of people. I am always open to collaborations, both with artistes from overseas and back home in India. There are some plans in the pipeline based on the work which I have been doing in Los Angeles and Atlanta but I can’t say more about it just yet.
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 "Ananya Birla")
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