Written by Shea Roney

Earlier this month, Rolling Stone Magazine published a shorthand list of artists that represent the future of music. The print, with a glamorous photo on the cover of Bad Bunny with a polished look and chains dangling from his neck, stands as a typical Rolling Stone write up. But once you get to page 73 (the meat and potatoes of the issue) in the midst of the “Rolling Stone Future 25” you will come across a warm toned photo of Annie Blackman. Wearing a butterfly patterned skirt, she looks at ease with her back resting on a subtle floral print wall. Within the first sentence of Blackman’s feature, Taylor Swift is name dropped. This can cast a giant shadow that covers anyone compared to Swift these days. It recalls the time in 2011 when Blackman, at the age of 13, got to meet the pop star and Swift empowered her to keep writing music. Whether or not that experience has helped Blackman reach this point (who’s to say?) her writing speaks for itself. 

Annie Blackman is a Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter from Montclair, New Jersey. Her most recent release off of Father/Daughter Records, an EP titled Bug, traps words of friction, justifiable nerves and love butterflies that exude from the walls of her safe space. But in a rare case, Blackman is an artist who has been sharing personal music since a young age. With documentation of life stuck in time, anyone can see the lengths at which Blackman has grown both personally and musically, proving herself through the years to be an instinctive storyteller. “What are the things it feels like I am the only person in the world experiencing even though I’m obviously not” she says when discussing writing decisions. And to the relation of which specificity in her work holds, we as listeners are given the opportunity to hear our common and complex feelings broken down into digestible and natural stories through her personal accounts. 

Learning guitar around the 5th grade, Annie Blackman began her public musical endeavors in 2016 when she released her first album titled, Blue Green, a collection of songs she wrote throughout her high school years. This was a fully acoustic venture representing the turmoil of young love that was recorded within the walls of her childhood bedroom . “I was in love with my best friend for quite a while and I never tried anything with him”, Blackman recalls when I asked about muses, in hindsight, she finds funny with age. Instead of telling him, she wrote songs and wouldn’t release them until it was all completely platonic. “Looking back on it, I honor and love the girl who had a crush on him, but it is funny to think of the gravity of the whole thing”, Blackman jokes. 

As a songwriter who writes with the acute details in mind, I asked Blackman how she feels her storytelling has grown with her since the lovesick songs from high school. “I have become more observant, more attuned to my feelings and also I think more selective”, as she recalls the harshness of some of her earlier songs. “I feel like now I understand that in order to pack a punch or tell a story of woundedness I don’t need to bring anyone down in such an obvious way” as comes with maturity she hopes. 

Blackman started receiving a lot of attention on TikTok from posting snippets of songs like “Seeds” and “Glitch” during the pandemic. Stranded in a time that was dedicated to stillness, Blackman’s words became something that sat comfortably with listeners. As videos started to see viral attention, Blackman tells me “it gave [her] the confidence boost to make a really proper demo and collaborate with some friends who know how to produce”. For the first time she saw that her songs could go beyond an intermediate circle of support.

Blackman soon sent professional demos all over, but landed on San Francisco indie label Father/Daughter Records. Blackman was familiar with this label because the bands Remember Sports and Forth Wanderers, Father/Daughter staples, came from her hometown. “These people seem cool and legit and down to earth so I emailed them and three weeks later I was in there”, Blackman recalls. 

In 2022 you put out your first album off of Father/Daughter Records called All Of It, where you recorded in a makeshift tent studio inside of your childhood home in New Jersey. Can you tell me about that process?  I mean, it was hard. It was deep pandemic and I was living at home. My dad and I built this PVC pipe sound blanket little hut thing and I would just go in there for hours and hours and hours. And because we made the whole thing remotely it was definitely difficult. I’d never actually recorded myself before, so you know, I had a little interface, I had a little mic, but it was a lot of trial and error. But I was also out of college, unemployed, and you know, COVID, so you can’t really do anything, so I’m glad it happened when it did because it gave me a sense of purpose for sure.

Earlier this year, Blackman helped represent Father/Daughter records at SXSW in Austin, Texas. When I asked her the peaks and pits of a week-long festival life, Blackman had nothing bad to say about the festival itself. “Everything just feels so fun and wholesome. You get to see people that you only get to see there”. But Blackman then brought up a point that is often glossed over and that being the financial struggles of a life in music. “I think the pits are that you don’t make any money and if you don’t have a car, which I don’t, the transportation costs really add up. So I think that was definitely the most painful part”. 

Right before Blackman jumped on my call, she was in the midst of a job search. “Everybody has a day job of varying time commitment, but it’s definitely important to strike that balance [with a career in music]. It’s a necessity”. Unless artists are reaching millions and millions of streams or constantly touring, there is no money in music and this is often a point that is not widely known by non-musicians. Blackman still considers it to be one of her two careers and “it is a job, but it’s really not”. Making music is expensive. Unless playing a solo show, Blackman tells me she just gives all the earnings to her bandmates because rehearsal rates can add up too. 

As time came to chat about the attractive title given by Rolling Stone, there were mixed feelings of course.” On one hand, I’m like, ‘Oh that’s fake!’. And on the other hand, I’m like, ‘do I need to now be the future of music?’”. The future of music is quite the title. It can sit heavy on one’s shoulders. When asked if this label was burdensome at all, Blackman responded with “I don’t know if it’s too burdensome, but I also can’t just rest on my laurels. Everything just sort of needs to be better than the last thing”. 

With print readers on the decline, there wasn’t much of a translation to a rise in listeners for Blackman. Considering it as street cred within her scene and hopes it will open the door for more opportunities in the industry, there is no denying that Blackman is still grateful for the honor. “Whether it’s sort of an accolade, or a duty I now need to carry out I’m not sure, but it mostly feels really cool and sort of surreal.”

As for her most recent work, Blackman sings on her EP, “Like a play within a play within a play within a scene” on the title track “Bug”, to decompartmentalize the rough goings in her life in palatable and frivolous chunks that she keeps in her pocket for keeping’s sake. This EP, and works prior, have shown that Blackman consistently makes concise pieces of work that have established her as a new voice worth listening to.  

For the remainder of the summer, Annie Blackman has a show at the Knitting Factory on August 26 in Brooklyn, New York opening for Beau. She is excited for more things in the works for the Fall.

For more info on Annie Blackman: bandcamp, TikTok, Instagram