Words By: Brianna Vacca

Twenty-year-old electronic beauteous Annie Elise is another annexation to terminating the gender disparity living between female and male producers. The songwriter has acted as a second hand for many artists tending to their projects as a songwriter, producer, engineer, and instrumentalist but has since regained sight of her solo career, releasing her second single, “We Can Pretend.”

“We Can Pretend,” co-produced by Josiah Soren and Piper Payne, is an imaginary depiction of the world and how it should be. Despite working remotely due to the lockdown placements, the trio produced an over-the-moon song laced with energy. It’s composed of colorful makeup and a brusque productive element stimulating with light breathing and linear harmonious vocals. Elise layers her vocals over a piecemeal percussive offering and cutting-edge synth. Its lyricism drips with the consistency of longing for a pleasant living existence to become a reality like honey.

Elise reveals, “’We Can Pretend’ is a song about the space between dreams and reality. We initially wrote it to be about a false awakening, you know, when you wake up in your dream but you’re still asleep – but the song turned into so much more than that. It’s interesting to explore the concept of wishing you could get away from reality, especially during the past year. I think it’s something we all wish for at some point in time, and although we know it’s something we know we can never get, it is nice to pretend for a little bit. I think there’s great comfort in that.”

“We Can Pretend” was initially written for a Discord server competition but has since blossomed beyond the depth of the social platform. Now, Elise has a passionate, dedicated Discord fanbase entitled The Annie Elites, where the group, composing of producers, musicians, and listeners, collaborates amongst themselves.

This single trails the release of her 2016 debut album Synesthesia; the multi-instrumentalists first revealing of living life with synesthesia. Elise’s attentiveness for electronica is embedded in the singer + songwriter’s roots due to this discovery. Synesthesia, a neurological condition, is a condition in which information that stimulates one of your senses ends up stimulating all senses. For example, hearing music and then seeing colors in your mind is an example of synesthesia. The self-penned ‘conductor for color’ gave a Ted x Lancaster talk entitled Seeing Sound: How Synesthesia Can Change Our Thinking in 2017 to give a bit of insight. This talk amassed over one hundred thousand views itself.

Currently, the electronica songstress is a producer at Dawn Patrol Music and a partner for tech brands such as MXL Microphones, Kilohearts, and Sublab. Annie Elise continues to bridge the gap between dreams and reality as she makes female producers dominating the industry just a bit closer.