Instead of chasing viral moments, she would rather create works that make a long-lasting impact. Her latest single, “Rain,” is a prime example of her process, planting musical seeds and letting them flourish. She wrote the song in 2020, but it was produced only a year ago, after Anáis was let go from her corporate job.
“I pretty much was just like ‘Eff it, I'm just going to do music full time,’” Anáis says. “Like, that job literally put me in the hospital because of the stress, and I almost died because of this freak health scare I had so I was like, 'Nah, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm just going to go all in with my music.'”
The song was produced by Nicci Gomez, and Anáis handled the cover art and the distribution in-house, along with her husband.
“My husband and I made the cover art together, and we did not market it at all,” Anáis says. “We were like, ‘Yay, my first single!’”
Though the song has already been out for a year, Anáis finally premiered the long-awaited music video for “Rain” last month. (“I knew if there was any song I wanted to do a video for, it had to be ‘Rain,’” she says.)
On the track, Anáis sings of redemption over a hypnotic, melancholy piano. ”Darkness casts its clouds / Stars are far away from here / Feeling all of this / No turning back away from you," she sings on one verse, as the song seamlessly floats into a transcendental, electronic instrumental. “Wash me, feel me, touch me, call me / Hear me, need me, free me, love me,” she sings on the song’s bridge.
At various points in the song’s life cycle, Anáis resonated with the message of change and metamorphosis — through dealing with the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, moving on from her draining job and, now, entering a new era as a musical and visual storyteller.
And given the song’s timeless element, Anáis knew it was time to release a music video for “Rain” when she received a sign earlier this year.
“There was a videographer on Instagram, who was like, ‘Hey, the universe has me feeling good,'" Anáis recalls. That videographer was Matthew Osborne, who was offering to shoot videos for only $500 to the first three artists who responded to his post. “I was like, shoot, OK, I can do $500. So I reached out to him, and we scheduled a meeting to get the vision down and get all that together. It was a process, and it took about a month or two to get it all down.”
She marked the video’s release last month at a special party at Bold Stroke Studios, celebrating a new life for the song.
Another song, “Victory Song,” became a full-circle moment this year upon its release in February. Anáis wrote the song in 2012, after a mini-tour across the U.S. At 19 years old, she was approached by a label that wanted to sign her, but after connecting with a family friend who was also an attorney, Anáis learned that this deal would’ve screwed her over in the end.
Texas Dreamin'
“I felt so crushed after that,” Anáis says. “I was like, ‘Damn, like, there go my dreams, essentially.'"The song is not super specific to that situation, but it's more about my decision to keep going, even though I hit a roadblock. And me having a good support system around me, which was, at the time, my family … it's a reminder for me to keep going and keep writing my own victory song.”
Anáis is working on what she describes as a “micro album” — a collection of songs inspired by a dream, in which the Adieu Anáis character was born.
It was a dream she had when she was dating someone who “was just not good for [her]” and realized she felt she had lost parts of herself. In the dream, Anáis found herself in the middle of a forest after her now-ex had refused to pick her up and take her home. In the forest, she finds a cave, which led her to where she needed to be.
“There was music, dancing, and lights,” Anáis remembers, “and everyone was having a good time. There was a symphony, and there was an orchestra, and all of this beautiful music.”
Elsewhere in the dream, the conductor of the fictitious orchestra approached Anáis, asking what she would like to hear. She asked to hear a piece by Ernest Chausson, who is one of her favorite French romantic-era composers.
"Then the conductor was like, 'Adieu Anáis,'" she says, "and then I had to finish the rest of my miserable journey to this guy's place. But I woke up and I'm like, ‘Holy shit. What am I doing?’ I don't want to give away who I am.”
When she’s not making her music or drawing up storyboards to visualize her folkloric dreams, Anáis teaches voice lessons to the next generation of musicians. Having grown up in a school in which the district’s budget didn’t fund the arts — and where there were no choir programs — Anáis believes it is important to instill a love of vocal performing arts in young people.
“What is the most rewarding is the mentorship that I get to have with my students, like being on a support system outside of their family, telling them, ‘Hey, you can do this, I believe in you,’ even if they don't end up being musicians or singers,’” says Anáis. “It’s just about having that experience of working with a voice coach who cares about them, and wants them to try new things, and not be afraid to fail.”
