Her wish: listen to everything in one go. Twelve songs in a row, experience the music as a kind of listening film. Singer Anouk (48) has some tips one afternoon in an Amsterdam hotel lobby: “Lie comfortably with your headphones and a glass of wine. Just step into it without distraction.” Although she knows that her new record is not for everyone. “Or that everyone will like this. It’s quite heavy. There’s a lot coming your way. But I would like it if people listened to it the way I intended it. Even though I had to cut up the songs for Spotify, they all continue in my head.”
Dark and menacing, mild and radiant. Singer Anouk performs with a sense of drama Deena & Jim, an orchestral, cinematic album, focuses on imagination. She wrote and conceived it with Swedish musician Martin Gjerstad, her writing partner for years. The recordings were with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, a seasoned orchestra with many film scores to its name.
For years she has varied musically: from exuberant rock, pumping soul, Dutch straight-to-the-point to intimate singer-songwriting. Now she goes all out with an orchestra. Deena & Jim, her fourteenth studio album, overwhelms in symphonic opulence. Like in a movie, two characters, Deena and Jim, go through good and tough times in twelve songs and a number of interludes. From infatuation and rapture to later hatred that is at least as intense as love has come to an end, to the despondent attempts to leave and turn around in life.
They are fairytale melodies. Bittersweet strings. Dark drums and tons of horns. It is grand pop bombasm, as melancholic, mysterious and ominous as a James Bond song, in which Anouk’s voice soars, revels and bites. Although she sometimes tumbles without support in the lavish arrangements.
She calls it a love letter to the desperate. In the opening song ‘From the Bottom To The Top’ she addresses the listener in a reassuring way. But who are those people, Deena and Jim? Just two people, according to the singer. “I was them. I am them. She is my husband. My ex-partners. They’re my friends. Their relationships. It’s everyone. Anyone who has had difficult relationships, especially after a divorce with children, will recognize themselves in the songs.”
Your first orchestral ballad was ‘Birds’ at the Eurovision Song Contest. That led to the loaded album Sad Singalong Songs in 2013.
“Sad Songs, although my least commercial album, is one of my favorite records. After that I didn’t think about a successor. In recent years, that desire has grown in collaboration with Martin. He is originally an arranger and also wrote opera music. And he is mega-talented. You should just be given carte blanche for once, I often thought.
“We wanted something super cinematic, because we both love film music. Isn’t it Disney, is it James Bond, also cool. Could we do that too? We didn’t care what came out. We don’t need radio songs. We had to do this once.”
When did you take the plunge?
“Yes, when are you going to do something like that? This costs an enormous amount of time and money. And the latter is quite a thing, especially if you know that you will not earn it back. I no longer earn from records, only from performances. You need big hits for streaming revenue. And yet I thought: I have to do it.”
How did you end up at the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra?
“Well, I’ll be honest, it would have been logical to record with the Metropole Orchestra. Nice area, good recording rooms. Anyway, we couldn’t figure it out.”
Why not?
“Because Metropole, understandably, wants to be in the foreground. That’s how they work: it’s that one artist with the orchestra. But yes, sorry, everything was already written and arranged. Only the games had to be played. Then you are hired as a band and you are not on the album cover.”
“The Prague Philharmonic Orchestra continuously records film and series music. There in Prague the wall is full of them Lord of The Rings until The Godfather. Just beautiful music. Our approach was also cinematic. Very nice to visit Prague too. I had never been there before.”
How long did the recordings take?
“Three days. Gosh, I thought, that orchestra must be thinking: do we have to record twelve pieces and five interludes in such a short time. I just felt guilty, I really can’t afford more. Turns out they normally do that many pieces in one day. They thought it was nice and spacious.” (laughs)
A luxury, recording with you.
“The luxury was that we now had the time to set our accents. So I’m happy afterwards. And the orchestra too, we heard. The conductor had never been asked so often about when this music will be released.”
Did you tell the orchestra what you had in mind?
“No. They didn’t even hear my singing part at all. Singing there took way too much time and, well, I’m not always happy with my sound. This music requires a different technique. I really had to feel each song. What feels good? Am I going to use my falsetto there? Or a chest voice? Especially with the thought of doing this live one day.”
What do you experience then?
“They are long slow notes. In some pieces it goes from very low to very high, in one song. I don’t do that much.”
Did you take singing lessons again before that?
“No, I’ll learn that myself. Purely by feeling. I feel comfortable in Martin’s studio in Sweden. Look, when I sing in the studio, it’s not always a pleasant sight, especially when you’re figuring things out. So I have to be able to do my shit shamelessly. And that is only possible if I feel very comfortable. That it doesn’t matter how I stand, how much tension is on my face, how lukewarm my body is.”
Because you go into it with your whole body?
“When I listen to records from the past I can hear that I am not letting myself go completely. That there were a lot of people in the studio during recordings and you stood there behind that window doing your best, aware of whatever face you made. So I had to hold back. While I could have been much more lukewarm.”
Does it feel liberating to sing symphonic pop?
“Super nice. But not like: oh my god, I’m just lost in that emotion. People have a romantic image of working in the studio. It’s just not that, because it’s also a business. The nuts should be good. I wear multiple hats as an artist, producer and financier.”
Can’t music make you emotional?
“Yes, when I write. Or when I hear back the end result. I’ll sit down for that for a while. But the whole process in between…? No. It’s not gonna happen. Because I work with other people, I also look at it from a business perspective as my own boss. Because of course I’m a perfectionist. Then I am no longer concerned with my feelings at all.”
It’s moving how ‘When I Die’ starts with your own in memoriam.
“Well, you never know when it’s your time. Practically speaking, I have already arranged everything well. It has come full circle for my family, that reassures me. I write down thoughts and feelings about it. I’m not really a talker.
“When my husband Dominique listened to this album for the first time, he came down the stairs quietly. Beautiful but heavy, he nodded. Then in the weeks that followed he kept asking me if I was happy. How I felt. Suddenly I realized: Oh, he’s worried about that record.”
And then you reassure him?
“I’m alive now, I’m very happy. And I emphasize how I had a whole life before him too. We are nineteen years apart. I’ve been through a lot with my six children, who have four different fathers. I don’t deal with those fathers anymore, but my children are also their father. I see my exes in them. Sometimes that’s super fun and sometimes you think: oof, oh yes, there he is again. So those feelings are sometimes stirred up.”
Anouk hopes that her orchestral record “will not disappear into thin air”. Yet in late May and early June in the Ziggo Dome, in addition to two rock concerts (Jim), she will only give one major orchestral show (Deena) – now with the Metropole Orchestra and a choir.
“I’m proud that I’m still here after all these years. I’m waiting for the moment when they say: dude Anouk, we’re scaling back the shows. We have to get smaller. That time will come. I’ve had that in mind for a long time. Three times the Ziggo Dome – I didn’t see that coming. Awesome. And certainly not normal for a woman my age, I think.”
What do you mean?
“Well, it becomes much more difficult for a woman at a certain age. That as an older man you can continue for a very long time. That you turn gray and have a beer belly and remain interesting. Which Dutch artist, and I am not talking about young girls with sex appeal, but a woman of my age, sells out the Ziggo Dome three times in her own name? I do not know them.”
Me neither. How did that happen?
“Don’t know. Did you see those comments at a Blondie performance at a festival? That is no longer about music, but only about looks and transition.”
Is that why you are so super trained again?
“No, I have to do that myself. I like to take good care of myself. That keeps me mentally strong. I’ve never been the type for tops or short skirts. From the moment I started performing I heard: tits! Show your tits. I changed that at a fairly young age, cut off my hair, made my clothes cooler, not sexy. I wanted my music to be considered more important than my appearance. You have to force them to listen to you.”