Brooke Annibale – Birthday
Indie singer/songwriter Brooke Annibale has released her new single “Birthday.”
The track is the latest to release off her forthcoming new album Bolder Font, which is due out on September 17th.
A touch of nostalgia delivered with a wink, “Birthday” is an ode to friendships lost to fading time. It captures the quiet irony of two people who were once close enough to buy each other birthday cakes, now too distant to even send a text. Atwood featured the single and raved “A gentle giant of a song, it carries years of memory on a brooding pulse, wrapping Annibale’s raw, unflinching songwriting in sweet warmth.”
“The whole premise of this song is built around an awkward feeling, sort of like the feeling of running into someone you lost touch with and forgetting how to connect with them, even though you once knew them well,” stated Annibale. “This is my tongue-in-cheek reaction to that feeling.” That tension lives right in the opening verse, while in the chorus, she wraps that bittersweet ache in an irresistible melody, balancing tongue-in-cheek wit with genuine warmth.
“Birthday” follows the release of the electrifying “Make You Mine,” which burns with the thrill of chasing something you simply can’t walk away from: the pursuit of love, a creative passion, a road not taken. It captures that irresistible pull of going after what you want one more time, making the scenic route feel like the only route worth taking. Annibale also recently released “Daily Dose,” a spirited reflection on unfiltered enthusiasm; “My Favorite Part,” the heartbreakingly vulnerable opening track; as well as the title track “Bolder Font,” which wrestles with the album’s underlying theme of self-worth and the gap between who we are and the identities that have been placed on us. Forged through disappointment, the song ultimately offers relief, a reminder that we have the power to shed that pressure and simply be enough as we are.
With over 50 million streams behind a strong collection of critically acclaimed albums, Annibale is known for her signature songwriting craft that resists easy categorization. Her music drifts somewhere between dreamy and dark — lush, genre-defying soundscapes built on expressive melodies and lyrics that linger long after the song ends. Following the release of 2022’s Better By Now, she faced a series of dispiriting setbacks that sent her back to square one. She started to convince herself that maybe her dreams were just too bold to actually achieve. She considered walking away from music altogether, but every time she tried, she felt herself drawn back, searching for a way to feel connected to it all again. In that moment, Brooke chose curiosity over collapse and did something quietly radical: she slowed down. In a world that tells you to push through and move fast, she took her time, shifted her perspective, and built something new from the ground up. She found that connection through taking a deeper dive into the creative process more than ever before by learning how to produce and mix her own music.
“Instead of totally falling apart, I got curious about what could reignite my love for making music. I have always loved being in the studio, it was like magic to me to hear my songs come to life in that way. I had dabbled in producing my music before, but never for a full length record. I wondered what would happen if I tried. This record has more of me in it than any other record because there is not a single sound that I didn’t have my hands on in some way.”
She enlisted the help of a mentor, Christian (Leggy) Langdon, who produced Better By Now, and that mentorship encouraged her to grow beyond what she ever imagined. She studied with Langdon on and off for nearly 2 years. “Working with Leggy on my last record was such an easy and uncomplicated process where I felt I could fully trust him. Having him as a mentor on this project was a smooth transition, because that trust was already established.” Annibale hand-picked every musician on Bolder Font, from long-time collaborators like violinist Eleonore Denig (a collegemate in Nashville), pianist Mark Ramsey (her longtime accompanist), bassist Tommy Ng (whom she met opening for Chadwick Stokes in 2018), and cellist Cara Fox (a returning presence from previous releases) — to new energy from drummers Florian Gouëllo and Dan Burns.
Now stepping fully into her own creative power, she embarks on a whole new chapter. One that’s less defined by milestones, more defined by the joy she rediscovered along the way and the quiet confidence of someone who deeply enjoys the process of creating music. As usual with Annibale’s writing, Bolder Font contains a spectrum of emotions, this time primarily focused on the internal battle of self-worth, identity, recovering from disappointments and finding ways to live life through the heaviness of the world. Making this record brought her back to something she hadn’t felt in a while — the pure excitement and joy of creating just to create. And somewhere in that process, she found something more valuable than a finished album: the realization that her worth was never tied to her output, but to the resilience that kept her showing up anyway.
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