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Last time I wrote about Annabelle Dinda, it was to cover her viral hit “The Hand.” I wondered what would be next for the rising singer-songwriter, and lucky for me, not long after “The Hand” was released, Didna announced her new album Some Things Never Leave. Didna joined me over Zoom to chat about the album, how she approaches her music after going viral on TikTok, and DIY-ing her album cover.  

Ones to Watch: Really easy question to start, who is Annabelle Dinda?

Annabelle Dinda: Liar, that’s the hardest question ever! Who is Annabelle Dinda? Just a girl. Damn, I really don’t know how to answer that.

Maybe you can describe yourself in three words instead.

Okay. Annabelle Dinda is silly, this is a word, imagine there’s dashes, obsessed-with-writing-probably-to-a-detrimental-extent, and loves-soup.

Do you have a favorite kind of soup?

Right now I’m on tomato. Recently, and it sounds humble, I had a chicken noodle that really blew me away.

Incredible. We are here to talk about the album, but I want to talk about “The Hand” first. What was it like for you when you posted it, and then all of a sudden it was this giant viral moment?

It was nuts, it was crazy. As much as when you’re posting you’re always going “Well who knows...” when it happens, especially at that volume, even when I was saying who knows what could happen, I really didn’t think that anyone was knowing that this was going to happen. It was crazy, it was a real mix of emotions, it was so exciting, and still is exciting in a belated sense. It’s such an incredible privilege to make anything that that amount of people are vibing with. I’m still rolling on that high, honestly.

I was seeing edits everywhere. I don’t know if you came across those.

I love the edits! I think editors are the most underappreciated artists in the nation and in the world. I want editors to make videos to my music forever. 

Did you have a favorite edit that you saw?

I saw a couple Hunger Games edits that really moved me. Somebody made a Heated Rivalry one with “Doesn’t Matter,” a new song on the album, and I was like, “More, please, more!”

Did “The Hand” going super viral impact your approach towards releasing music? Were you nervous to release your next thing after that?

No. If anything, I was more fueled. So far, I’ve gotten the feeling that because there is demand, I will supply, I think that’s fun. I really was excited to get more music out quickly, and I am continually excited to get more music out. Not in a way that’s crazy and not honoring the music that came before, but I love making music, and I’m so eager to do as much of it as anyone will let me do. Who knows, in five years, if I’m still lucky enough to do this, then maybe I’ll be kind of like, “I don’t know what to say to these people that are watching me,” but right now I’m like, “Listen to me! I got things to say!”

I love that. You mentioned that the title came very late in the recording process. What was it like choosing the title? Did it hit you all of a sudden?

We had been workshopping titles, and by that I mean I would come into the studio like “What about this one?” and they’d be like “Yeah…” I’m not a titler. I think some people start with a title, they start with the concept, and this was very much like “I don’t know.” But like anything that is named properly, it did come. Once I said it, I was like “Oh!” and everyone I said it to they were like “Oh!” and that’s how you know. When enough people say it in that little sassy voice. 

Are you willing to share some of the other potential titles?

For a little bit, I was thinking it might be called Bedrock from [the song] “Gunpoint, Headlock.” I liked that idea because it's not a first album, but it is setting the stage, but then my friends kept joking that bedrock had kind of a '90s R&B bedrock sensation to it. 

I actually want to talk about “Gunpoint, Headlock.” The first time I heard the album, that one really stood out to me, and I knew it was a song I would play again and again. I really like the bridge in particular, it’s different and almost takes you out of the song, but in a good way. How did you decide on that sound?

I had written the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and then I did the bridge the day after or a couple days later in one swing. In terms of writing, it came out very naturally. There was no “I’m going to do something intentionally that’s going to bring it out,” it was more just the way I always do it, which is just whatever falls out of me at the given time that I’m trying to write. Sonically, we did a demo version where I just did guitar and my voice, and then we came back to it at nearly the very end to finish it off. I knew that it would have the big ending with the weird dissonant strings and the drum coming in at the end, but I was like, “We need to fill in the beginning more, we need to fill in the beginning more.” Then the more I listened to it, the way it was, I was lik,e “I actually really like that the beginning has kind of nothing.” It’s just this weirdly stark and wordy, anxious soundscape, and then it explodes at the end. So it was more a matter of getting used to the way that it was and allowing it to be what it was. We could’ve done a lot to busy it up, added drums earlier, really orchestrated it out, but the only other orchestration besides me singing and the guitar is my voice in the back doing those hums in the chorus. That was fun. 

I really like that part, I think it fits even though it's different.

Yeah, it just kind of boils over.

Yes! That’s the way to describe it. You mentioned that you write with things just falling out of you. Are you sitting down and trying to write, or are you in line at the coffee shop, writing a line down on your phone.

It’s both. I will often sit down and be like, “I’m going to write a song now," and I do that. There’s also... the amount of times in public that I’ve been really embarrassed singing into my phone. Trains are the worst if there’s someone next to me and I’m singing into my phone, no one wants to see that. I remember one time, I was 10 or 11, I had a little recorder that I ran around with, and I would be in the back of my mom’s car, and my brother was in the passenger seat, and I’d be singing into the recorder. I remember my brother going, “Is she just singing to herself back there?” So yeah, it’s both.

I love that story. Something else that I love is your lyricism, and I think your lyrics resonate with a lot of people. Is there a lyric you’re most proud of on this album?

I do have a couple. As a lyrical whole, I love “London Plane Trees Grow in Philly.” In that, my favorite is “When I start catastrophizing / I call you to stem the rising / Ache of living, fear of dying / ‘They’re the same’ says fate while sighing,” which, saying out loud without singin,g sounds so melodramatic. Honestly, that whole song. It’s probably the most specific to me song on the album in terms of how raw it is, and that’s probably why I like it the most. 

When I was listening to the album and the “Ache of living, fear of dying” lyric clicked in my head, I was like “Woah! They kind of are the same thing!” I really like that lyric too.

I love when sometimes I write a song, and I’m like, “Okay!” It’s like a different part of me is writing it, and I g,o “Okay, speak! I love that!”

I love when people are able to appreciate their own work and be like, “I kind of did eat that up.” I think that's actually really important.

That’s something funny about songwriting because something else in your brain turns on that isn’t really you, so you can compliment it because you’re like, “That’s not me, I would never say that.” 

You mentioned that your last album was also about grief but the “unspeakable-only-singable” type of grief. Is there anything else that you find easier to sing about than talk about?

What do I find easier to sing about than talk about… everything. Everything is easier to sing about than talk about, because sing about means write about and writing is, as you know, it’s the best to be able to curate what you want to say and sound smart and interesting as you’re doing it. I think pain is easier to sing about than it is to talk about because when I write a song, and people have commented on this on my TikTok when I sing, that I look like I’m having a lot of fun singing deeply sad songs. And it’s because writing the song is the catharsis of experiencing the pain, and it turns it into this elated, awesome feeling that I get, which is writing and singing the song. Singing pain, there’s this healthy removal from it. It’s an acknowledgement, but you also get the feeling of literally processing it through words. There’s so many layers to that, which I find in a weird, maybe morbid way, enjoyable. 

I totally understand what you mean about enjoying singing, and just enjoying, in general, sad songs. 

I think that’s why people are listening to my music. They just like sad songs. That’s awesome!

I think also to hear someone say something that you’ve been feeling and not feel alone is also an appeal. 

Yeah, universal appeal.

I wanted to make sure we talk about the album cover. I had seen one of your TikToks, where it looked like you might have been physically crafting the album cover. Did you kind of arts and crafts the album cover yourself?

Yes! One of my very best friends, Lia, who does all of my pictures and visual stuff with me, we made that. We went to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and we took hundreds of photos, and we wanted to do this crowded cover. We cut out all these pictures and laid them out. I liked the idea of seeing the actual, physical pictures over the base photo. We ended up taking a lot of them out and keeping it pretty simple because, like everything, once it’s a little edited, it’s better. But yeah, we took the pictures, printed them, scanned them, it was really fun! 

I love that it was so hands on for you. I have one last question for you: who are your Ones to Watch? Who do we need to be listening to?

I’m listening to a lot of Hudson Freeman. Grace Gardner, that’s a friend of mine who I love. There’s this one guy, he lives in Amsterdam, and he sings on the street, and every time I come across a video of him I go “He’s so good.” Dermot Henry.