Book 5: MONTANA SKY

By complete chance and the mysterious workings of the universe, ‘Montana Sky’ came to have the most diverse concoction of inspiration behind it. The first one came from the title of a travel / adventure book I once stumbled upon. It read (quite simply) ‘Montana Sky’ and immediately transported me back to one of the most magical trips of my life. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to take a summer road trip through Yellowstone and Montana. It was that summer feeling of infinite possibility that I remember most deeply - tanned hands gently weaving through open car windows, bright blue skies, the sheer awe of the vastness of open valleys and fields, covered in tall grass that sway calmly in the breeze.

There’s something about road trips, especially summer road trips that bring out the existentialist within me. Watching landscapes change and melt into one another in front of your eyes, seeing so much life play out in a matter of seconds.

I dug through my phone to find some photos from that road trip:

Then, add into this mix - a TV show that completely captivated me at the time I was writing this song (Hulu’s ‘A Murder At the End of the World’). I kept coming back to a scene in the first episode where the two main characters are on a road trip through the American west, driving on a highway in the blue light (you’re seeing where this is going, right?). They’re listening to and attempting to sing along to a song that clearly neither of them know that well - Annie Lennox’s ‘No More I Love Yous’ (you should definitely listen that song, so I linked it for you HERE hehe).

It was this very scene that ended up inspiring the chorus of the song:

I had been wanting to write a country song for the longest time. When we first moved to the US, me and my dad would often drive alone, either to go get groceries or home from school. During those drives, he would always play country music radio. There was something so hopeful and comforting about it - everything about America seemed so new and distant at the time, but hearing people sing about heartbreak and growing up in this land, made it somehow feel closer, more tangible.

Maybe it’s fitting that the first real country song I wrote talks about driving on a highway. :)

After having this chorus done, however, I hadn’t been able to come up with anything else for weeks. The lyrics and storytelling were so intimate and descriptive that it was difficult for me to grasp what the rest of the song would say. That’s when the last puzzle piece of information comes in: AI. As I was working on this song earlier in the year, there was a big boom of companies using AI to generate audio (think Udio or Suno). There was so much AI music being created, a lot of it (if prompted cleverly), indiscernible from a human-written song. It was this wave of content and narrative that almost felt like a challenge for me to try and capture something so intrinsically human that it wouldn’t possibly be put together by an LLM.

And what is more human than questioning your very existence, coming to terms with your own mortality?

As I sat down to start producing the song, I immediately began stacking and layering instruments: glittering pads, rhythmic synths, you name it. But the more I added in, the more I felt the song slipping away.

It was as if with each new element I brought into the production, the song’s nostalgic, melancholic, heart-wrenching yet hopeful feeling faded away. It was then that I decided to do something I’ve only ever done a few times before: I started deleting and muting tracks. I got rid of absolutely everything until all that was left was my demo vocal and the piano. I sat down at my keyboard and played through the piano track one more time, this time all in a single take and without any extra edits. The dynamics and rhythm moved with the song and all at once, it was alive once again.

I realized (in hindsight, ridiculously late in the process) that a song about the human experience had to feel as human as possible. So I sent the demo out to Yoed for strings, Chris for drums, and Victor for guitar and bass. This is what they sent back:

As you can hear, each of these tracks includes some breaths, little background noises or clicks, all capturing the life inside which they were recorded.

I love how imperfect they are - created by masterful musicians who are playing in the moment, capturing a lifetime of work and practice through 3 minutes of music.

And that’s kind of what ‘Montana Sky’ is all about: finding meaning in being alive within a magical collision of events that created our little world - all of our human chaos and beauty taking place on a tiny rock just endlessly floating through space.

Book 4: WHEN I FALL IN LOVE

I always believed in finding the love of your life. Blame it on being raised by soulmate parents or a childhood concoction of early 2000s romcoms, Disney channel and musical theatre, but I have lived in perpetual anticipation of a fairytale meetcute (oops?).

Turns out, though, that fictional men are just that: largely fictional and devastatingly scarce. So as a little reminder to myself (and potentially a few other hopelessly romantic girlypops roaming the world), I wrote ‘When I Fall In Love’: a song about not settling. :)

To get to the origins of the song, however, we have to jump back to August 14th of last year when I came up with what I thought was one of the strongest chorus melodies I’d written thus far (I still stand by that hehe):

It was fun and it was carefree and it was catchy: very Recession Pop-era that strongly influences all of the music I make.

Initially, I thought this would end up on the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album. So I continued working at it on that same day and wrote the first verse and pre-chorus with the album’s romcom storyline in mind:

But the more I listened to it over the next few weeks, the more two glaring issues with the song became evident:

a) It was just another meetcute song? At this point in the year, I was already in the ‘committing to each other’ stage of the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album / storyline so releasing something that would revert back to the meetcute stage seemed super random??

b) The meetcute described here is super creepy!? I mean, it’s a guy standing by himself on the side of the street at night. MUCH more murder than meetcute lol

I couldn’t come up with anything better for the song so I decided to shelf the idea indefinitely. I went back to finishing the ‘Hopeless Romantic’ album and completely forgot I had written this.

Fast forward to earlier this year when I was planning out releases and trying to come up with new song ideas. I found the ‘When I Fall In Love’ chorus in my phone’s voice memos and was hooked on the melodies all over again. I was determined to make it work this time around - that chorus was too strong to just throw it away!

So I started chiseling out the song: what would it be about? Do I keep the original chorus lyrics or switch them around???

I write all of my lyrics ideas in the Notes app on my phone - if I think a certain lyric is good enough, I immediately put it at the top of a song’s page under its intended section (aka verse, pre, bridge, etc.). If I like a lyric idea, but am not sure it’ll fit the song or I can’t decide if it’s super strong, I put it in a section at the bottom of the song, titled ‘Extra lyrics’. I can always tell how tedious the process of writing a song was based on the amount of text under that ‘Extra lyrics’ section.

And let me tell you, this one has a TON:

version 1

version 2

As you can see from these, I was chasing my own tail - trying out a barrage of different themes, topics and storylines that would be able to tell a captivating, cohesive story. I had changed directions and options so many times that I entered an itsy bitsy spiral that became counter-productive.

So I made the decision to step away from the song - this was around the time I was filming the music video for ‘To Tell You The Truth’ so that provided just the distraction I needed.

A few weeks later, I listened back to the original chorus I wrote last year and realized that I won’t be able to beat those original lyrics - they were symbiotic with the melody, all the vowels placed to optimize its catchiness. That’s when I began focusing on placing a twist on the classic romance narrative - what if the song was about not settling when finding the love of your life?

In hindsight, that seems like such a simple, obvious conclusion but it took all of those failed, grueling lyric attempts to arrive at the final, most authentic narrative. :)

It was now time to set out on the production journey of the song! I always try to find parallels between the song’s lyrics and the instrumental so that they complete and strengthen each other’s messages and characteristics. With this one, the common thread was relatively obvious: the chorus likens falling in love with fireworks on the 4th of July and what’s more American than Country music? I had been tentatively dipping my toes into Country Pop with a few of my past releases (most obviously, ‘September’) so it didn’t seem out of place to bring some of that influence into this song as well (AND ‘To Tell You the Truth’ that comes right before this track features a lot of country-adjacent acoustic guitar).

Since my musical instrument skills are limited to the piano, I messaged Victor Balconi (incredible bassist + guitarist I’ve been working with for a couple of years) and asked if he could lay down some acoustic guitar for me to create the production around.

And BOY did he come through!! He messaged m back with layers of tracks and bass that captured the breezy, carefree nature of the song beautifully:

At first, I thought I would keep this song super stripped and relatively acoustic, the main production elements coming from layers of vocals and harmonies. This very quickly proved to be a foolish endeavor as I found myself adding tracks upon tracks of synths and strings and fills aka exactly what I said I wouldn’t do: layers. :)

After all, falling in love should feel overwhelming and all-encompassing and over-the-top and dramatic, right??

There’s these pizzicato strings that feel like little sparkles flying through the air:

some tremolo cellos that grow in volume and help with tension and energy building:

very 2010s Pop strings in the chorus:

layered over this piano motif:

I also added in a bunch of synths for extra texture:

Following ‘The Many Lives Of Juliet’ and ‘To Tell You The Truth’, both of whose creation processes were super straightforward, it took me by surprise just how much of a challenge ‘When I Fall In Love’ was. But to be completely frank, I LOVED every second of it.

It always makes me a bit worried if things get too easy or comfortable - that to me is a sign that I’m not learning anything new (and stagnation is firmly one of my biggest fears). So being hit with problem after problem during this song made me super excited; the little nervousness I would feel along every step of the way encouraged me to do things differently, to learn and expand my horizons.

It’s challenges like this that I’m extra grateful for, especially when the end result isn’t entirely terrible. :)

Book 3: TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH

It’s a warm June 2023 afternoon, I’m sitting in my bedroom and looking out of the window as the sun sets behind the golden hills that sit quietly in the background of our house. My windows are wide open and I can see the gentle summer breeze caress the trees and roses in the backyard. The cicadas are warming up for their evening chorus, the birds eagerly chirping their interludes. It’s perfect. The sheer simplicity of the moment strikes me: this will never happen again. I’m here, right now, experiencing the profoundly uncomplicated magic of being alive. As it has already so often done throughout my life, the world once again found a way of reminding me of how remarkable it is. And with that awe - heartbreak. The sudden realization of the transience of it all. A deep sadness that it won’t, it can’t last forever. An awareness that bubbles up every now and then of the importance of being present, of soaking it all in while it lasts.

I had been trying to write a song that would capture that feeling for SO many years and in that moment, I had an intangible sensation that I could finally put that whirlwind of emotions into words. So I sat down at the piano in my room, windows still open, birds still singing, and wrote the chorus of ‘To Tell You The Truth’:

As I was writing it, I started thinking about my grandparents who live in Slovenia. The feeling of the fleeting nature of time started broadening out from moments, and spilling into people. How unfair it is that we get a limit on how long we get to experience all this beauty, connect and get to know the ones that mean the most to us? Then, as my thoughts were swirling out of control, I came to a realization: when you truly, fully, deeply love someone, no amount of time you could spend with them would ever be enough.

And that’s what the song would ultimately be about. The heartache of knowing it must all come to an end, intertwined with the joy of getting to experience it in the first place.

Fast forward 6 months and I had pretty much forgotten about the song until I needed something to post on TikTok in late February of this year and found the chorus of it in my drafts.

I kept listening to that chorus on loop, over and over again. The melodies instantly felt very Disney so I thought it would be a great addition to our little Bookstore - a soft spring ballad about the magic and heartbreak of time.

As I sat down and started producing it, I knew I wanted to it to parallel the experience of watching a Pixar movie. The colors are always so vibrant and alive, the world-building is beautiful and when you’re a child, it’s a fairytale. But the true mastery of these movies lies in the hidden meanings and messages: as you get older and understand the world better, you start to notice little details that add depth to the one-dimensional story you knew as a child.

My idea was to create something similar with ‘To Tell You the Truth’ - the production would be sparkling and gentle, as if you were listening to a Disney soundtrack. Then, as you start paying attention to the lyrics, you begin to notice the much deeper, more heartbreaking nature of the song.

I always like to anchor my productions around a main melodic motif and I thought it would be a cool idea to come up with something that could stay in the same loop / pattern for the whole song. So after some trials and errors, I came up with this acoustic guitar pattern that would go on to represent the concept of infinity throughout the song:

I decided to build the entire song around this motif, so as the production grows and swells, this melody gets echoed in other instruments:

I also wanted to add some of that “magical pixie dust” sound that we associate with Disney soundtracks so I went on a hunt for what that mystical, evasive element is. After listening through some of my Disney favorites, I found that the missing puzzle piece is harp. A harp!!

So I went ham on it (can a pun be made here, and I say “harp on it”??) and came up with this that still sounds to me like Tinkerbell frantically flying around Wendy’s room:

As the hours went by, the production was piecing itself together and I was well on my way to being done (which I guess shouldn’t be that surprising to me because grandiose, over-the-top production was always kind of my favorite indulgence hehe).

It was already getting late into the evening when I decided this song needs a little strings interlude between the second chorus and the bridge (of course, classic Anja). In an attempt to try and find a fitting melody for said strings interlude, I started looking up fairy / magical forest playlists on Youtube (this song already felt like a little fairy forest village). As I was sitting there, listening through these aesthetically pleasing playlists, I noticed a lot of the songs and melodies sounded very Celtic. Hmmm, interesting. Then, I started wondering what makes something sound Celtic? So I Googled it. Apparently, most Celtic music is written in the pentatonic scale (aka 5 consecutive whole steps). Hmmm, even more interesting. Then I thought that maybe it would be cool to try and play some of the vocal melody of ‘To Tell You The Truth’ on the piano. And lo and behold, the chorus of the song is written in the pentatonic scale. Hmmm, the most interesting.

As it turns out, I unintentionally wrote a Celtic forest fairy song. Great, spicy, unexpected, perfect. It felt important to drive the whole pentatonic point home so I wrote these strings melodies for the interlude that put a little bow on top of the whole production.

I cried when I was writing this song and, in true Diver fashion, I cry when I listen to it now. It seeps into my life as a reminder of the fragility and finite nature of everything around us. Yet, it makes me hopeful that in this awareness, we can create our own little infinity - by listening and observing and connecting and reveling in the magic of the universe that we get to temporarily inhabit.

Book 2: THE MANY LIVES OF JULIET

It’s September of 2023 and I’m about to play my very first acoustic show in a few months. Carl (the infamous San Francisco fog) was out on full display and the day felt like proper, true fall.

Since the show wasn’t until the evening, we decided to turn the Saturday into a family trip to the city.

We spent the afternoon strolling along North Beach (Italian district) alleys, feasting on pizza and walking all the way to downtown for some extra caffeine fuel.

As the evening approached, we made our way to the bookstore where the acoustic show would take place.

And let me tell you: it was THE most aesthetically pleasing. romcom-coded location a hopelessly romantic, part-time delusional girlypop like me could possibly dream up.

It was giving 90s nostalgia, it was giving ‘Notting Hill’, it was giving Julia Roberts with deep brown butterfly cut hair, a leather blazer and beret.

And as I was waiting for the audience to arrive and the show to begin, I found myself wandering the store, browsing the bookshelves and fully taking in the aesthetics of the place.

I stumbled upon a book cover with a title that seemed to send my imagination into a spiral:

You see where this is going, right? :)

And in that very moment, it hit me: I should write an entire album of songs inspired by book titles. The song covers should look like book covers and the title of the album should be ‘At the Bookstore’.

In a fraction of a moment, in the most unexpected of places, I found a direction, a red-thread weaving through for the music I would be writing for the next year.

I couldn’t get that Juliet book title out of my head, so the next day I thought of this melody (these are all original titles of voice memos from my phone hehe):

And two days later, the pre-chorus that I was absolutely obsessed with:

Fast forward a week, I was cleaning my room and came up with the verse melody as I was vacuuming (true story lol). You can even hear the vacuum still running in the background (insert a face palm emoji here):

In the first few weeks of writing the song, I thought it was one of the best things I’d done thus far. Then, as my focus shifted towards finishing up ‘Diver’, my passion for this song started to slowly wash away (pun semi-intended). I had absolutely no idea how I would go about producing it, or even what direction the final song would take. An acoustic guitar-led ballad? A rock-ish Pop high energy bop? It wasn’t until I was so fed up with the song and had all but given up so out of sheer boredom and desperation, I started playing the chord progression as single bass notes on the piano. It suddenly all made sense! I would have a punchy, 8th note synth bass underlining the production that would turn into a glittering, synth Pop main character anthem. :)

Thematically, the song would capture a multi-faceted puzzle of a woman, a layered cake of contradictions - just like real women are in real life (duh!).

I used some personal details to get me started (like opening lyrics about Juliet being a Gemini - my birthday is May 25th), then expanded outwards from there. It started feeling more and more like a Jane Austen character, wild and free, gentle and strong, with wind in her hair, unable to be tied down by the world.

One of my favorite lines from the song that I feel truly captures its essence (kind of the song’s elevator pitch) is this little bit in verse 2:

floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee

she’s tame as a river and wild as the sea

And yes, that absolutely is a reused and repurposed Muhammad Ali quote - I had it written down in my notes for years, but had never before quite found the right way to use it.

I even added a couple of nods to ‘Diver’ and the ‘At the Bookstore’ project as a whole :)

one in verse 2:

she’s just like her mother’s mother

a headstrong, head-first diver daughter

and one in the post-chorus of the song:

on an afternoon at a small café

diving into books on a rainy day

As I was building the production, I was trying to find ways to incorporate the themes from the lyrics into the music. How can the two components work together to strengthen and complete one another?

The first thing I added was a four on the floor kick drum - a beat that very much feels like the sonic representation of strutting down the street. Think romcom opening where we see the main character walk down a busy NYC street, headphones on and wind in her hair:

The final drums were recorded by Chris Hill in Germany and oh. my. god. can we talk about that snare sound!?

ANYWAYS

The other detail I wanted to add were some very classical sounding strings and melodies that would harken back the influence of Jane Austen and the Regency Era that very much inspired the Juliet character.

I sprinkled little fills throughout the song, then ultimately decided to fully embrace the influence and do a completely strings-only quartet breakdown section in the song:

I finished up the production with some glittering synths that brought Jane Austen back into 2024:

Ultimately, ‘The Many Lives Of Juliet’ is a celebration of being a woman, of turning your life into a movie. It’s about embracing the magic of living and being your truest, complex, unique self.

I hope it brings a little smile on your face, some rhythm into your feet and perhaps even inspires an unapologetic power walk during your daily commute. :)

Book 1: DIVER

In the summer of 2023, I stumbled into a little San Francisco bookstore, tucked neatly in between an Italian pizzeria and a tech startup (very San Francisco). As I was dreamily browsing through the shelves, I found myself holding a mysterious hard cover: no title, no author, just a woman covered in evening light, swimming in the ocean.

In a particularly fortunate twist of fate, the first thing that came to my mind in that moment was: “I’m a diver, watch me dive in.”

It was such a simple sentence, yet paired with the book cover in front of me, felt much deeper and all-encompassing, like it was holding a whole ocean of meaning and stories in that sentence (yes, all of the aquatic puns and connotations intended). 

I went back home that night and kept thinking about the image, feeling like there was a song there, just a few ideas out of reach. I knew that if this was to be the chorus of my song, whatever came next needed to be the hook, a twist on the idea of diving. 

I was sitting at my piano one day, sifting through options in my mind: diving into love, diving into dreams, diving into youth, diving into feelings. Wait, feelings? That’s it!! Diving into “seas full of feelings”. It was that very moment that guided the creation of the rest of the writing, the production and visuals for the song. Diving into the ocean would serve as a through-thread analogy of letting yourself feel. 

Throughout the process, I kept finding myself coming back to that imagery, finding ways to incorporate water-themed words and sounds. In the lyrics of ‘Diver’, I had a little too much aquatic fun (ha!) and splashed in words (double ha!) like “swim”, “slip”, and “sink”. I locked myself into my bedroom slash home studio and the first ‘Diver’ demo came together within a single day:

I wanted the whole song to feel like a steady rise, as if you’re standing on the shore and watching the waves, waiting for one to wash over you. It would all culminate in a massive, sprawling bridge section that would feel as overwhelming as it does to truly embrace feeling every emotion. I knew this would be the first song for the ‘At the Bookstore’ project and I now had months to listen to it over and over again, obsessing over every little detail (the first demo was created in August 2023 and I knew the release date for the song would be in January 2024). I sent out my tracks to Chris Hill, Yoed Nir and Victor Balconi who recorded live drums, strings and bass for the song.

I kept thinking about it, dissecting the production in my head before falling asleep, feeling as if there were pieces missing. It came together too easily, too void of any challenges that would push me to learn something new. So I pulled a classic Anja move: I re-opened the production session and added tens of new tracks that would help complete the sonic landscape of ‘Diver’.  I’m a huge believer that the most effective songs find a way to expand on the story described in the lyrics, growing and extending it into the production and sonic space of the track. In my very own attempt at this, I spent hours sitting at my computer and listening to hundreds of synths. I was looking for siren-esque, magical, ethereal mermaid sounds that couldn’t help but evoke images of water, of the sea.

I included this single note siren:

synths that to me sound like they’re taken directly out of Avatar (Way Of Water ofc):

and choirs of mermaids with their long hair gently floating through the ocean depths:

I even included ocean wave sounds I recorded on a trip to Carmel as riser effects in the song:

there’s also a kick drum that sounds like a heartbeat:

I also frantically messaged Victor and threw him a curveball by saying “hey, can you add some acoustic guitar to this?”. Within a couple of days, he came back with the most perfect tracks: 

Puzzle piece by puzzle piece, the song started coming alive in its truest, fullest form. I added extra melodies and counter melodies to the climax bridge section, overlapping and drawing your attention from one instrument to another. There are over 50 choir vocal tracks alone, then there’s a long, soaring electric guitar melody, some eighth note spiccato violins and high piano octaves that remind me of Lady A’s “Need you Now”. 

As I was wrapping it up, I slowly began to realize what the song is truly about: being human. There is nothing more quintessentially human than our ability to feel and process extremely complex emotions. It’s what makes us alive, what showcases the magic of our existence in all its remarkably simple, yet remarkably profound glory.