Hannah Wicklund is nothing like any artist you have experienced before.
At 27-years-old, she has been playing music live for almost 15 years, and has consistently released EPs albums and singles that have shamelessly bared her heart and soul.
Her new record, The Prize (out now) does all this and more, delving obliquely into the pain of heartbreak, growing apart, and still having love for someone you can no longer stand being around. It’s incredible music; moving, heartbreaking, inspiring – and, on top of it all, it is wonderfully produced.
Hannah fills her music not with just heaps of passion and love, but also an unwavering feminine aggression that could only be compared to the likes of Alanis Morissette or Stevie Nicks. Yeah, big shoes to fill, I know – but Hannah does it effortlessly.
And her power isn’t a front, either. While speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk from her home through a Zoom screen, Hannah felt like a force to be reckoned with–a creative force, that is, whose artistry was almost palpable with an ethereal persona which was as charming as it was intriguing.
Listening to Hannah’s story, it quickly became clear she had put in the emotional groundwork to bring The Prize to life. “I’d say probably a good six of songs – like the heartbreak kind of songs – like Witness and Dark Passenger and Sun To Sun – these are all written about my first relationship, which was with one of my drummers.” With a knowing smirk, she added: “I learnt that lesson! No more drummers; especially mine.”
“But I was young,” she almost defended. “I was 18, 19-years-old.” Dark Passenger in particular tells the story of one major break up which occurred on New Year’s Day. Like other great historical writers, Hannah referenced her ex quitting smoking and getting splinters in her feet from his skateboard to paint a more detailed picture.
“It’s a lot more fun and painful, at the same time, to write what you experience,” she went on, before illustrating her point further. “But, I went through a bad breakup and stuff, but like, I don’t–I still have love for that person. And so that’s where the song Last Love came from.”
Thankfully, Hannah is far removed from these heartbreaks now. The Prize, she told me, was actually finished in early 2020, but that was when things got tougher for her, however, when “bulls**t music business” bureaucracy seeped into the music.
“I’ve had a lot of disappointments on the music business side of things,” she admitted. “And, ultimately, the big hump, the big pain of getting this record out and it taking so long. In a parallel universe, this record was supposed to be released almost two years ago. It was to come out March of 2022. And I had a lot of things kind of teed up around that. And so when that didn’t happen, I found myself not really being able to tour for a while until this record kind of found its home.”
Left with a full album sitting on a Dropbox somewhere, Hannah couldn’t sit on her hands. Creative through and through, she got to work on composing a painting for each of her singles (including the album’s front cover), in order to build a visual experience to go alongside her auditory masterpiece. “I was just like, You know what, if I’m having a hard time releasing this record, I just need to double down and like basically invest even more of myself into it.”
Like a proud parent, Hannah gleefully described The Prize as “the best thing that I have ever done,” before adding: “I’m just so excited.” And I believed her.
Thankfully, bureaucracy is not something that is going to stump Hannah in the near future. The singer released The Prize on her own label, Strawberry Moon Records, and more music is already in the pipeline. “It is not going to be another five years,” she confirmed. “Definitely not. I have a full seven-song EP in the can. And, actually, I’ve been selling it online – the pre-orders will be shipping this month. But I have a record called the Living Vault.”
She described it as her “honouring her girlhood and fully embracing her femininity and her womanhood” with the songs she wrote in her formative years.
Before that, though, she’s about to embark on a massive UK tour – buy tickets below.
Hannah Wicklund – The Prize is out now. Buy it from Amazon here.
Tickets for Hannah Wicklund’s UK tour are available here.
May 2024
June 2024
