Berlin-based artist, musician and vocalist ANYX announces her debut solo album Starlink, out 28 August via La Rubia Producciones. Alongside the announcement, she shares the album’s first single, ‘Ladybirds Spine’, with an accompanying video directed by Tobias Textor.
ANYX is the solo project of Anna Lucia Nissen, known for her previous role as front-person of the trio Anchoress.
‘Ladybirds Spine’ acts as the literal spine of the album, creating balance and bearing its weight, setting the tone from its opening lines: “On the back of a ladybird’s spine / Life seemed too much, too much for my kind”.
ANYX explains:
“Those opening lines came first. I wrote this song from a place where everything felt too big, too loud, too much — the pressure of visibility, of documenting your life online just to prove it’s real. I felt like I couldn’t keep up. Like sitting on a ladybird’s spine, seeing the world from that tiny, overwhelmed perspective. But underneath that smallness is something stubborn – the feeling that I can still act, still choose, still move through the noise on my own terms. I won’t rise – to your standards, but my own. I won’t dance – at your parties, but my own.”
“Ladybirds Spine lives between two emotional states. On one hand, there’s this feeling that everything has become too big, too loud and too fast, that you’re struggling to keep up with a world built around endless visibility, consumption and performance. That’s the character wandering through shopping malls and other liminal spaces, feeling overwhelmed and out of place.
ANYX
But at the same time, there’s another energy running through the song. Defiance. Desire. A refusal to disappear. When I sing ‘I won’t rise to your standards, I won’t dance at your parties’, I don’t hear resignation. I hear someone creating their own space instead. That’s why the second character dances through a parking garage surrounded by black luxury cars, reclaiming these symbols of power for herself.
In a way, the video says: I’m not dancing at your party. I’m dancing at my own party in the parking garage between your shiny cars while you’re sitting at home watching the evening news. Both characters are me. One feels small. The other refuses to stay that way.”
Live date:
16 Sept – Berlin, DE – Galiläakirche (w/Kristof Hahn & Andy Aquarius)
Find ANYX on Instagram | Bandcamp | Linktree