Singled Out: Annie Stela's Weight Of Life

Keavin Wiggins | 07-06-2020

Annie Stela is gearing up to release her new EP "Joy" on July 17th and to celebrate we asked her to tell us about the new single from the effort, "Weight Of Life". Here is the story:

Before I was a mother, I wrote songs. I spent my late teens and all of my twenties making records and going on tour. I often said, to get a laugh at parties, that it was my only skill. It was funny, but deep down I believed it.

So when my baby came and the dark newborn months set in, there was a muted voice I heard sometimes from far away. It would scream to me between washing bottles and changing diapers and choosing the right white noise machine on Amazon; I was just too damn numb to ever write a song again.

One night when my daughter was still a baby, I was out to dinner with my husband and another musician friend. We were at a trendy taco joint in Nashville and I had brought my daughter along. She was off her schedule because we were traveling, and she had fallen asleep on my chest. My musician friend was young, in his twenties, and just getting courted by record labels and managers. I watched him at the bar from my perch at our table, the baby hot and sweaty on my chest, not able to get up for fear of waking her. I watched his grin and his death metal t-shirt and his hands as he patted friends on the back and downed shots of bourbon, free as the wind. My fury was terrifying.

That night I went home and wrote this song. It was the first one I wrote about motherhood, and it eventually became the first song to be recorded for this EP.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the EP here