Norwegian pop princess ANNIE tells ALASDAIR DUNCAN about the difficult realities of trying to make it as a commercial recording artist, and about the inspiration behind her sparkling new album Don't Stop.

For better or worse, Annie is one of those artists that DJs, journalists and bloggers love, and the rest of the world treat with relative ambivalence. Her 2004 debut, Anniemal, was sun-kissed Scandinavian pop perfection – Pitchfork declared it one of their albums of the year, and singles like Chewing Gum and The Greatest Hit found their way off the blogs and into the clubs, but at the end of it all, Annie was not the chart-topping, world-beating pop sensation we all thought she should be. Her DJ Kicks compilation, released the following year, defined the indie dance sound of the day, and launched her into a sideline career as a record-spinner, but the fabled second album never seemed to come. 

There were a number of false starts along the way. Rumour had it that Annie had recorded close to an album’s worth of tracks with Röyksopp and Richard X, and was prepared to release them before the end of 2006, but that year came and went without any album. The following year, she signed with Island Records, and a new album seemed close, but a couple of tantalising leaked tracks and a falling-out with the label later, we were left with nothing. In 2008, she started from scratch, signing with the Norway-based Smalltown Supersound label, renowned for their indie disco releases, and began work on the follow-up in earnest.

The resulting record, Don’t Stop, is released this month. More explicitly electronic than Anniemal, it features productions by Paul Epworth, Richard X, Xenomania and even Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, and represents another earnest crack at mainstream success. I wonder, does it feel slightly surreal for Annie now that the album is out after all this time? “You know, I haven’t got that question from anyone before,” she laughs. “I’ve wanted it to be out for so long, it does feel a little bit surreal, but it feels amazing. For a while, I honestly didn’t think it was going to come out at all, because I had all that trouble with my old label, and I was thinking ‘what should I do?’, but I’m just so happy that it’s finally, finally out now, it’s great.”

“It would be nice if someone would buy the album for their grandmother ...”

Annie has received a lot of support from the internet over the years – bloggers were behind her before anyone else, faithfully posting each new remix of Chewing Gum and The Greatest Hit as they came out – but the downside of this enthusiasm is the fact that many fans have probably already downloaded an illegal copy of Don’t Stop. For an artist like Annie, every record sale counts – how does she feel about the prospect of illegal downloading? “I don’t know – first of all, I think it’s difficult,” she says. “Making music, from a philosophical perspective, is strange. You make songs and you don’t really want to look at them as being just a product, but it’s hard as an artist to make a living if you don’t sell a single record at all.

“It’s annoying if you’re not selling any records,” she continues. “If there are some big fans of mine out there, it would be nice if they bought the record, because that will mean I’ll be able to make another one. For artists who don’t sell millions of records, it’s difficult to make a living if, like me, you don’t sell anything.” I’m a little bit taken aback by that last bit. I suggest that I’ll tell her friends I’ll put that in the article, and tell her fans to buy a copy if they like it. Annie laughs at this. “I’m not bitter, but at the same time, it would be nice if someone would buy the album for their grandmother, then maybe they could download it for themselves.” 

Given that we’re on the subject of Don’t Stop, I’m keen to ask Annie about the more overtly electronic, shinier pop sound of the album – is it reflective of her own changing musical tastes, I wonder? “Well, you know I work as a DJ,” she tells me, “so I constantly have new and different music around to inspire me. It was very important to me to make an album, rather than just a compilation of songs. When I did My Love Is Better and Loco, I was listening to straight-up pop music, and when I did Marie Cherie, I was listening to a lot of ‘60s French pop music, so that reflects my taste as well.” When The Night, the album’s big ballad, is a throwback to the hugely cheesy tracks that Robyn and Britney Spears were putting out in the late ‘90s – something Annie’s always wanted to try – while I Don’t Like Your Band was inspired, fairly literally, by a morning spent watching “hugely annoying” music videos.

I’m also interested in I Know Your Girlfriend Hates Me, a great song which, strangely enough, did not make the album itself, but is available on the accompanying bonus disc. This cheeky track was surely inspired by a real world-experience.  “That’s actually a true story. That was about me and, I had a friend who had a girlfriend who didn’t particularly like me. She told her boyfriend that, okay, if you’re going to hang out with her, I don’t want to see you anymore, and I thought it was ridiculous. I was listening to Kiss by Prince a lot at that time, so I sort of started, I had a guitar, and then it just came.” At this point, to further illustrate her enthusiasm, she begins singing the song’s chorus to me down the phone, a recording I’m definitely going to hang on to. How did the people involved react when they heard the track, I wonder? Annie giggles nervously. “Well, I know they’ve heard it, and I think they knew immediately what it was about. I didn’t have to say much more than just making the song.”

As for the future, Annie is collaborating with French producer Fred Falke, and is not ruling out an Australian tour – either as a DJ, or performing songs of her own – in the near future. “Yeah, you know, I was saying to another person today that I would love to go to Australia,” she says. “I’m going back to Europe tomorrow and the weather is miserable – I really wish I could go straight to Australia. I’ve been there before and I had such a good time. I’m not sure when, but hopefully I’ll be back really soon.” 

DON’T STOP is out now on Smalltown Supersound/Stomp. Go to www.myspace.com/anniemusic for more information.

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