Why We Went Back To The Early Songs

I used to think once a song was released, it belonged to the past.

You wrote it, recorded it, survived it, put it out, and moved on. Very mature. Very clean. Very convenient for people who do not spend half their life lying awake thinking, “That vocal could have been better.”

The truth is, I don’t feel finished with a song just because it has already met the world.

That is why NDM and I decided to go back to the early material from Burning Barns & Bridges and From Bleachers To Breezy. Those records mean everything to me. They were the sound of me leaving Watseka, landing in Chicago, becoming louder, getting braver, making mistakes, finding my voice, and trying to turn a messy life into songs that actually held together.

But when I listen back now, I hear how young those recordings were.

I don’t mean that in a cruel way. I’m proud of them. I had to make those versions to get here. But I hear the limits too — the rushed decisions, the rough edges that were not always charming, the production ideas that were almost there, the vocals where I can hear myself reaching for something I didn’t fully know how to do yet.

In a strange way, those first versions feel like demo records to me now. Important demos. Honest demos. The kind of recordings that caught the spark, but not always the full fire.

The songs deserved another chance.

NDM felt that too. He had always heard a bigger version of the material than we were able to capture at the time. So we started talking seriously about rerecording and remixing the tracks, not to erase the originals, but to bring them closer to what they had been trying to become all along.

Most of the remixing and rebuilding work was his. He went back into the tracks and pulled them into sharper focus: stronger arrangements, cleaner mixes, more modern production, better shape, more punch, more space where the songs needed it. The goal was not to sand away everything human. It was to make the emotion hit harder.

That balance mattered to me.

I didn’t want these songs turned into shiny little objects with no fingerprints left on them. I still wanted the dust, the heartbreak, the humour, the attitude, the ache. I just wanted the recordings to feel like they belonged to the artist I am now, not only the girl who first wrote them.

The biggest thing for me was the vocals.

In June, I went into a small studio around Old Street and Shoreditch and resang the vocals over two completely mad weekends. I don’t know what possessed us to think that schedule was reasonable, but apparently optimism and caffeine can impersonate planning if you let them.

It was intense.

I was living this new London life during the week — working, writing, adjusting, trying not to get flattened by the city — and then spending the weekends stepping back into songs from Watseka and Chicago. It was strange singing them here. I was thousands of miles away from the places that made them, but maybe that distance helped.

Some songs I understood better because I was no longer inside them.

When I first sang those tracks, I was still very close to the feelings. I was still trying to prove I was brave, still trying to sound like the person I wanted to become. This time, I didn’t have to force it as much. I had lived more. I had lost more. I had become more confident in the studio. I knew when to push, when to hold back, when to let a line land instead of throwing my whole chest at it like a dramatic raccoon with a microphone.

Actually, no. That is unfair to raccoons. They probably have better breath control.

The point is, I can hear the difference.

I’m proud of these vocals in a way that feels new for me. Across the rerecorded tracks, I hear more control, more character, more trust in the lyric. I don’t sound like I’m trying to convince everyone I mean it. I just mean it.

That is a big thing.

A lot of singers talk about range or power, and obviously those things matter, but I think the real growth is in knowing what a song is asking from you emotionally. Some lines need swagger. Some need restraint. Some need bite. Some need softness. Some need the little crack in your voice you used to hate because it tells the truth before you can stop it.

Those two weekends reminded me how much I’ve changed.

The songs are still the songs. I Run The Red still kicks the door open. Backseat Reverie still smells like old cars and first heartbreak. I’m Breezy still has that Chicago arrival energy. Girl In The Bleachers still belongs to every quiet kid taking notes from the edge of the room.

But they stand taller now.

They sound more polished, more pop, more alive, and more confident without losing the reasons I wrote them in the first place. That is what I wanted. Not a disguise. Not a rewrite of history. A better photograph of the same truth.

I know some people get attached to first versions, and I understand that. There is something special about hearing an artist at the beginning, before everything tightens up. I don’t want to pretend the early recordings don’t matter. They do. They are part of the story.

But I also don’t want to leave good songs trapped inside recordings I’ve outgrown.

That is the reason we went back.

Because the material still matters. Because the songs have travelled with me from Watseka to Chicago to London. Because I can sing them better now. Because NDM could hear how much more they could become. Because sometimes growing up means returning to your own work and refusing to let it stay smaller than it deserves.

I’m not embarrassed by the early records. I’m grateful for them.

But I’m proud of these versions in a different way. They feel closer to the sound I’ve been chasing: emotional, direct, bigger, sharper, still human, still a little dangerous around the edges.

The girl who made those first recordings was trying.

The woman singing them now knows what she’s doing.

Most days, anyway.

Anni x