Annie DiRusso on her latest release, "Nine Months"

Annie DiRusso is a storyteller. Her latest release, “Nine Months” tells the story of a person who realizes they’ve stayed with their significant other for far too long. The track takes you from the start of the relationship to the very end. The nine month relationship is told in the span of a four minute song and not a single detail is left out. DiRusso says it all. I got the chance to ask the artist a few questions about her latest release. Read our interview below.

 YOU’RE BASED IN NASHVILLE. DID YOU GROW UP THERE? 

I actually moved here for college. I'm from Westchester, New York. 

WHEN DID YOU START MAKING MUSIC? 

I always liked to sing, and I feel like when you grow up in New York and you like to sing, you get pushed towards singing Showtunes. I was learning all kinds of Broadway songs when I was younger. And then, when I was eleven, I got really into Taylor Swift. I watched this bootleg Taylor Swift documentary and in the documentary, there’s a clip of her talking about how important it is to write your own songs. So I taught myself how to play guitar and started writing these really bad wannabe Taylor Swift songs. That was how I started making music. 

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR SOUND NOW? WOULD YOU SAY THERE IS ANY INFLUENCE FROM YOUR EARLY BROADWAY/TAYLOR SWIFT SINGING DAYS? 

Maybe there is some influence from Broadway in my stage performance, but I wouldn’t say there’s that influence in my music. My music right now is more indie-pop or indie-rock sounding. I think with each new release it edges a little closer to rock, but I do tend to write very pop sounding hooks and melodies because I really like pop music. 

I WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT YOUR NEW SONG. HOW IS “NINE MONTHS” DIFFERENT FROM YOUR PREVIOUS RELEASES? 

It's definitely more personal than my other releases. It's my first breakup song. I think the thing I love most about “Nine Months” is that I was able to fit the story of my nine-month relationship into one long song. The song takes you from the beginning of the relationship to the very end. It definitely feels like a journey. It was really special for me and so cathartic to be able to take this whole experience and keep it in one song. 

DID IT TAKE YOU A LONG TIME TO WRITE “Nine Months?” 

Oh my gosh, I worked on that song for three months. I wrote the first verse and chorus when I was still in a relationship with the other person. After we broke up, the second verse flowed out much easier. I wrote the second verse and the rest of the song with my friend Daniel Nunnelee. I think what's interesting is that I wrote the hook line, “I never thought I’d be the girl who stayed,” while I was still in the relationship. I was fully self aware that I was in a bad situation and staying in it, even though that’s not who I thought I would be. No one thinks they’re going to be the person who stays in that kind of situation. It's interesting for me to look back on the song and hear what I was actually thinking while I was dating this person. I was definitely going back and forth on pieces of this song for a while. I wrote the first part in July and I didn’t finish it until September. I find that I write my best songs by having a bunch of good pieces of something and figuring out how to put them all together. 

THE LYRICS ARE SO PERSONAL. IS IT EVER HARD TO BE THAT HONEST IN YOUR MUSIC? 

It's hard for me not to be honest. I gravitate towards lines that are more personal. Although, this song specifically did feel a little different to put out. The lead up to the release wasn’t as fun for me. I was getting really anxious and upset thinking about putting it out. But, all of those emotions disappeared once the song came out. That’s been really nice. 

I SAW THAT YOU WERE PROMOTING THE SONG ON TIK TOK. HOW HAS THE PLATFORM HELPED YOU SHARE YOUR MUSIC AND SHARE THE STORY OF THIS SONG? 

I can't even speak to how much Tik Tok has helped me share my music. It's been pretty insane. I got on Tik Tok in late August of 2020—just on a whim to promote my song “20.” My guitarist was the one who encouraged me to join. The video I posted for “20” took off and all of the sudden I had this platform that I never had before. It's interesting to see what songs people on the app gravitate towards. Some songs are a little bit more attractive to Tik Tok users. After I wrote the first verse of “Nine Months” I thought it could do well on Tik Tok. Since I’ve recorded it, it’s been a matter of figuring out which pieces of the song people will like. I didn't expect this, but I posted the outro of the song and it did really well, which was super helpful for the release. It created an audience that I’ve never seen before. I've never seen numbers like this in my first few days. People were so quick to embrace the song. Without Tik Tok, I don’t know where I would be. The platform's been really helpful for me. 

WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE GRAVITATE TOWARDS THE OUTRO? 

I think that it’s the line, “No, don’t you say we ever were in love.” It’s really simple, but I think it says a lot. People could apply that line to different situations that they’ve been through. It’s also anthemic. That line repeats. It’s something you can yell. There could be a lot of reasons, but I was surprised that part of the song was the one that took off. 

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE PART OF THE SONG? 

I love the second verse. Content wise, it's really fun for me because it's more specific. I wrote that with my good friend, guitarist, and great artist, Daniel Nunnelee. The second verse goes, “In late July we went upstate for your twenty second/All you wanted was to mess with my head/Tell me I’m dumb,all my friends suck.” I was writing that part of the song with one of my best friends who I'm sure this person had said shit about. It just felt so full circle. It was such a beautiful moment to be able to create something like that with one of my best friends. 

THE GUITAR ON THE TRACK IS AWESOME! 

Thank you so much. I tend to write my guitar parts as melodies. I love melody. That's my favorite thing to write. I think that's why all my songs have guitar solos in them. I typically sing those and then translate them into guitar. 

WHAT CAME FIRST FOR THIS SONG—LYRICS OR GUITAR? 

 There's a bunch of pieces I wrote that didn't even make the song. There was so much I sifted through. I eventually landed on the line, “I was so beautiful” and started to toy with that idea. When I play the song live nobody ever comments on the amount of times I say the word beautiful. But I made a Tik Tok of me in the car jamming out to the song, a few comments were talking about how I used the word seven times in the first verse. I very much did that on purpose. I really loved that idea of digging into the idea of what beautiful means to a person and how it can be taken away from you. I had the lyrics for the chorus kind of scattered within my notes app and then the other two lines flowed when I was writing the song. It's a mix of lyrics I had saved and lyrics I came up with on the spot. It’s definitely a very lyrically driven song. 

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU WERE READING/WRITING/LISTENING TO WHILE MAKING THIS SONG?

Yeah. I was listening to the Liza Anne record Bad Vacation and Samia’s The Baby and I was reading Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein. I read Just Kids by Patti Smith two years ago and now I only like to read memoirs written by women. Hearing these women writers use words in a way that I wish I could helps me with phrasing and figuring out why something sounds impressive to me. 

“Nine Months” IS  IMPRESSIVE TO ME! AND ITS MESSAGE IS VERY EMPOWERING. THE SONG TALKS ABOUT BEING STUCK IN A BAD RELATIONSHIP. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO PEOPLE WHO FIND THEMSELVES IN SIMILAR SITUATIONS?

That’s a tough one. The song is empowering for me now that I’m out of my relationship, but it definitely is the opposite of empowering to be in the type of situation that inspired it. I've gotten a good amount of messages from people who are either out of these kinds of relationships or maybe still stuck in one. Each relationship is so different. It's hard for me to give any type of advice, but I would say being kind to yourself is so important. For me, the most important part of the song is the “it's not my fault” repeat line. Sometimes, when you’re in these kinds of situations, it feels like it’s your fault, even though it's the other people who make it impossible to leave. FKA Twigs just did an interview where she explained it in a really good way. I can’t articulate it quite as eloquently as she did, but she said something along the lines of “instead of asking a person why they didn’t leave a relationship, we should be asking why they couldn’t stay.” But to answer your question, I only got out  of my situation because someone sent me something really revealing about the person. And then it wasn't about me anymore. It's hard for me to give advice except to just be kind to yourself and remember that it's not your fault. 

HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW THAT THE SONG IS OUT? ARE YOU PROUD OF IT? 

Yeah. I'm super proud of it. It’s empowering to have it out there. Some people have said it’s been helping them, which I think is really cool. I can’t wait to play it live. I have never been more excited for anything more than for live shows to come back. That’s going to be an amazing feeling. I played a bunch of shows back in February of last year before COVID, but now I have this Tik Tok platform. I have a much wider audience now and I think it’ll be incredible to play these songs for all of these people that I’ve just been interacting with online. 

Photos by Lily Pickering.

YOU CAN LISTEN TO “Nine Months” BY Annie DiRusso ON STREAMING SERVICES LIKE SPOTIFY AND APPLE MUSIC. GO STREAM THE SONG AND MAKE SURE TO FOLLOW @twentyminuteslater TO STAY UPDATED ON FUTURE POSTS.