Ears Wide Open: Annika Rose

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Annika Rose (Photo by Zhamak Fullad)

L.A.-reared Annika Rose’s world at the tender age of 17 follows the road of precocious musician on a much-trodden pathway in this town. Her debut EP “Ventura Boulevard,” released last month via TaP Records, is about landmarks in her life both literally and figuratively the last few years.

They range “… from record deals, to my parents getting divorced, losing friends but also making amazing new ones, falling in love for the first time and just basically growing up,” says the singer-songwriter, “So much of these things have happened along Ventura Boulevard, it’s where I live, work, eat, hang out. And although so much has changed for me personally, Ventura Boulevard has remained the same for me.”

She’s recently released a new video from her collection of pop nuggets. “Fly to You,” directed by Ece Gurlu (Christina Aguilera, Halsey) and Kit Walters, starts with Annika Rose feeling small, just a keyboard synth accompanying her love sick melody. Soon the gates of her feelings open and the song builds with her agonizing all over sidewalk benches and diner counters over her unworthiness and insecurities and all that she wishes she can say to her object of infatuation. By the chorus, she’s able to push that all aside and rise to a skipping beat (with delightful animation, both in her mood and with butterflies and paper airplanes) to consider “So what am I to do? / What am I to lose? / If I could fly, I’d fly to you / What’s the point of this? / If you might heal me / ‘Cuz where you are is where I want to be…” With courage backing up her cardboard wings, she’s that much closer to expressing how she truly feels to the one she loves.

||| Watch: The video for “Fly to You”

||| Also: Watch “In the End”

||| Also: Listen to the entire “Ventura Boulevard” EP