After years of grafting, British rising star Anne-Marie is celebrating the release of her long-awaited debut album, ‘Speak Your Mind’ today (27 April).
But despite having waited years for ‘Speak Your Mind’ to come to fruition, Anne-Marie won’t be resting on her laurels, and is already looking ahead to album number two.
“I want to release another album, like, really soon,” she told HuffPost UK, when asked about her future plans, before clarifying: “Not really soon. Not, like a week after or anything, but soon.
“I just feel like I’ve waited so long for this first one, and now I just want to be really fast with everything. So, I want to be able to record a second album in the next year, and finish that.”
On what she has in mind for her follow-up album, she said she was keen to reunite with ‘Speak Your Mind’ collaborator Jennifer Decilveo, having discovered towards the end of making ‘Speak Your Mind’ that she is also a music producer.
“The day that I found out that she could produce as well as write was the day that we wrote ‘Cry’, which is the first track on the album” she explained. “I just really love that sound. It’s really gritty and really Alanis Morrissette-y. I just feel like on the second album, I really want to be more gritty and more… I dunno. More, I think.”
In our lengthy interview with the singer, she also discussed the range of emotions she’d been feeling in the lead-up to the release of ‘Speak Your Mind’, admitting there were moments she feared the album would never come to fruition.
“At times, I totally felt like it was never gonna come,” Anne-Marie recalled. “It just seemed to be always going back and back and back… but yeah, it finally did, and now I have all the songs on it that I feel like my album needs.
“I feel very excited because it’s finally coming out, but also very nervous because it’s scary putting out something that you know you can’t adjust or change a little bit. To know that I can’t do that anymore is quite scary. I’ve wanted to put an album out every year for the past five years, so it is a total relief. But still, like… the nervousness and excitement is overriding that at the moment.
“I know I’m really proud of it, and I really love every song, so that’s, like, the first hurdle to get over when you’re putting an album out. I just really hope that everyone else likes it too.”
Read our interview with Anne-Marie in full here.