Rising pop artist Annika Wells shares the video for her new single “Modern Art.” The video was directed by Logan Fields (Syd, Slayyyter, Rod Wave) and captures the songs essence as Annika walks the halls of an art gallery. The exhibit? Remnants of a relationship.
The minimalist pop song is a poignant piece of commentary on heartbreak in the digital age. Her voice is soft yet fragile as she tries to absorb the truth of her own words. “There’s no pretty way to break a heart,” she intones in a half whisper over an ominous drone. A delicate beat then kicks up underneath, urging her to share more. “Breaking up is modern art,” she declares, before orchestral strings sweep in as if soundtracking the credits to another sad ending.
The track not only captures the pain of a breakup, but the struggle with having to process it inside—and online. Annika explains that the song “explores the aftermath in the modern age where our relationships are no longer just interpersonal experiences, but digital galleries in which we can curate, arrange, and erase carefully constructed identities. It walks you through the world that’s left after the real break up—the physical evidence, but also the online remnants that are increasingly inescapable in this day and age.”
About Annika Wells
Most people keep personal, embarrassing, and crazy thoughts to themselves. Annika Wells isn’t one of those people. She doesn’t just express these thoughts out loud either. She peppers them through her songs with the kind of honesty you expect from your childhood best friend. In her music, she’ll rattle off bucket list ambitions, refer to herself phallically, or write about a doomed romance (with that same ex as her cowriter). After watching her older brother play piano, she started taking classical lessons at the age of four. She eventually ended up at Berklee College of Music in Boston.
Before dropping out, she linked up with producer Giulio Cercato and wrote and recorded what would become her first single “Break” in 2016. It caught fire around the world, catapulted onto the Spotify Global Viral Chart, and eventually eclipsed 15 million Spotify streams. She wrote and featured on “Crawl Outta Love” for Illenium, amassing 58 million Spotify streams, reaching the Top 30 on the Billboard Hot/Dance Electronic Songs Chart, and notching the International Songwriting Competition (ISC) Grand Prize. Between performing in sold-out arenas across the country with Illenium throughout 2019, she landed a string of major placements as a writer for Jonas Brothers, PRETTYMUCH, BTS, and Steve Aoki. After racking up over half a billion streams, she welcomes everyone into her mind and heart on a series of singles and her forthcoming debut for Vol. 1/Epic Records.
