Called “a towering, soul-baring tunesmith" by Billboard, magnetic newcomer Avery Anna wrote or co-wrote every song on her debut album, Breakup Over Breakfast, released today via Warner Music Nashville (LISTEN HERE). The ambitious 17-track LP showcases her ability to harness raw emotion and infuse it into a nuanced lyricism well beyond her 20 years. Produced by David Fanning, Breakup Over Breakfast contains stories ranging from romance to rage, penned with a sacred honesty and sung with a soulful heart.
Growing up in Flagstaff, Arizona, Avery’s grandfather shared classic country music with her as a little girl. That was all she knew as she began teaching herself how to play guitar by watching YouTube tutorials before diving in with real-life piano lessons as well. “I quit, though, because I hated playing by the book and I couldn’t read sheet music,” she says. “I play by ear. So by the time I was in middle school, I would wake up at 5:00 AM so that I could play piano and sing before I went to school. I was my family’s alarm clock.”
After making the 1,600-mile move from Flagstaff to Nashville at 17, the newcomer found herself in writing rooms with some of the most prolific songwriters in town. And while she was busy with high school and friends and sports at home, once she arrived in Tennessee and signed with Warner Music Nashville, music was all she wanted to do. (That, and some trigonometry at her kitchen table to finish up her senior year of high school virtually.)
So, she prayed. “I prayed about it, and this all felt like something that God wanted me to do. I felt a lot of peace, so it was definitely a spiritual thing for me. It was kind of the first thing in my life that felt undeniably right.”
That’s when she started to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
This meant giving herself permission to pull from real-life experiences for all 17 tracks that she wrote or co-wrote. Like the difficult relationship that inspired songs like the album’s “rocking, snarky and feisty” (MusicRow) title track, “Breakup Over Breakfast,” or “Blonde” where she “takes the cliches of being a blonde and turns them on their heads [as a] drawling, winking, snarky response to a condescending male” (MusicRow).
“Make It Look Easy” finds her tapping into her angrier side for a sound that Billboard describes as “rage-fueled rock” featuring a “ragged edge in her voice [that] tops thrashing drums and a sonic thicket of electric guitars [to] mirror the lyric’s emotional angst.”
“I feel like through the music I can kind of have an attitude, almost like I’m passively fighting back through my music,” she says of the mix of poignant ballads and songs with a Dolly-like sass. “I can confide in my journal and I can confide in the writing process, but releasing the songs and playing them live makes it feel like I’m giving other people a place to confide in the way that I confided in music. It feels like it’s not about me anymore.”
Avery dives deeper into the waters of vulnerability on songs like “vanilla,” exploring the feelings – good and bad – that surround young women’s earliest experiences with consent, and “girl next door,” a heartbreaking track she penned entirely on her own while in between shows.
“I was sitting in my kitchen one night after a performance, reflecting on what I had just experienced with my fans. I’ve learned so much about them and the lives they’re living through letters they’ve shared with me over the years. We connect with each other in such a powerful, moving way and I feel a great responsibility to each one of them as someone creating music they can turn to for support. It reminded me of my childhood best friend and everything she has overcome in her life and the way that we were able to lean on each other growing up.”
She comes full circle on the track “lose you again” featuring chart-topping country hitmakers, Parmalee. The group’s lead singer, Matt Thomas, reached out to Avery after discovering her viral social media posts and eventually connected her with their management team in Nashville.
And when Avery found herself in a room with Nashville’s beloved Love Junkies (Lori McKenna, Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey), what happened next was “the rest.” Inspired by her grandmother’s sage advice to do what you can and let the Lord do the rest. It’s the last track on the album, with good reason. “That’s really, really, really, really important and that's what it all really comes down to.”
With a packed 2024 touring schedule, fans will be able to get up close and personal with the nascent singer-songwriter who is out on the road now for her Cool, Calm & Collected tour while also making appearances at multiple festivals throughout the summer.
