Anna Leone Breaks The Cycle With Contemplative New Single “Once”
Anna Leone, the 26 year old singer-songwriter from Stockholm, has shared her latest single, “Once”, along with the accompanying music video. The track is lifted from her debut album, which will soon be announced for release later this year, and follows 2020’s single “Wondering”, and 2018’s EP release Wandered Away.
An introvert at heart, Leone originally bought a guitar with no intention of sharing her music with anyone past her four bedroom walls. Fortunately, people began to listen, and considering she has been drawn to artists such as Bon Iver, Laura Marling and Lana Del Rey, her candid storytelling through her music should come as no surprise.
“Once” features the same guitar picking melody throughout the song, in an almost trance like repetition. Coupled with Leone’s clear vocals and lyrics that reference past innocence and mistakes, a hypnotic, dreamlike state is conveyed through the song. “Once I was naive enough to stare into the sun / oh, once I had I dream,’ she sings, adding to the otherworldly feel of the track. At its core, “Once” considers regret and the struggle of breaking out of patterns of behaviour – “Here I am again, I’m making all the same mistakes, and it’s all my fault” – with an insistent urging heard in the lyrics as well as the accompaniment that build into the latter half of the song.
The video couples perfectly, filled with nature and Leone exploring open fields, caves and bodies of water. Filmed in The Azores, there’s a surrealness of the landscape that perfectly matches with the track. As the video closes, we see Anna reentering the water where the video started, looking back at herself as a child – symbolic of the ‘once’ that’s been referenced throughout the song.
About the song Leone shares, “The narrative loop comes from the idea of being stuck in your ways, going through the same patterns, but then choosing to break out of that and do things differently. Towards the end I reconcile with the past, symbolized by the little girl. I choose to embrace what once was in order to move forward.”
In its vulnerability, “Once” is an introspective song that will have you reminiscing on your own past as you listen – good or bad. Take a trip down memory lane, whether it’s yours or Leone’s memories, by watching the video below.
