The last time we checked in with Anna B Savage, she was just about to release her debut album, A Common Turn, which came out at the beginning of 2021. Since then, the London musician put out an EP, These Dreams, made up of songs that didn’t make the cut for that full-length.
Now, she’s back with a stunning new track called “The Ghost,” which hypnotically builds and breaks over five minutes, utilizing Savage’s deep register to sound truly haunted. “Thought you were gone, but four years on, you’re back again,” she sings. “Stop haunting me, please/ Just leave me be, please.” The track was produced by Mike Lindsay, of LUMP and Tunng. Here’s what Savage had to say about the song:
Breakups are strange in that sometimes the easiest method for getting over someone is tantamount to acting like that person died. This song explores the feeling of being haunted by an old partner who is no longer in your life, and wanting, desperately, to be free of those memories. How easily they bubble up from the physical body or mind: being scared of saying your ex’s name in bed, seeing them in other people, smelling their perfume. Not knowing what to do with how much you loved them.
Sometimes, I make voice recording of dreams I’ve had, immediately after I wake up. The extended version of this song opens with one of those recordings – recounting a dream I’d had about an ex many years after we’d last spoken. The song charts that seeming synergy and soulmate-experience of wanting to be together, in mundanity and the extraordinary. Noticing the same things, experiencing the same things. Quickly this descends into feeling unnoticed, unreal, the desperation of not feeling like you’re seen or heard in a relationship. The desperation of wanting to leave that relationship behind and feeling unable to escape. And then ultimately even when being free of the relationship, being unable to escape the memories and triggers reminders of that person.
Watch a video for the song below.
“The Ghost” is out now via City Slang.
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