Brooke Annibale went all the way to the edge of the map—Parsonsfield, Maine, population: nobody you’ve ever heard of—to make a record that sounds like neon light reflecting off wet pavement. Hold to the Light might be her most sonically adventurous album to date, full of swirling synths, rain-soaked acoustics, and melodies that are both heartbreaking and hopeful. Turns out the loneliest corner of New England is a pretty solid place to start over.
“I was looking for a completely different scene,” Annibale says. “All my other records were made in Nashville. This one, I lived in the studio. Literally. It’s a farmhouse with a studio built in, and you stay there while you work. It was secluded, but in a really productive way.”
If that sounds like the setup for an ambient folk record, think again. This time out, she traded the acoustic for electric guitar and fused organic textures with subtle electronic production. And somewhere along the way, Robyn crashed the party.
“We were working on the song ‘Glow,’ and it started as this sweet little acoustic thing,” she says. “Then Sam [Kuszaj, the producer] played this part on a keyboard and I just said, ‘Have you ever heard “Dancing On My Own”?’ We took a break for dinner, I played it for him, and that totally changed how we finished the song. It’s not as pop, obviously, but the vibe stuck.”
That kind of stylistic zigzag doesn’t feel forced on Hold to the Light. Instead, it’s part of a broader reckoning—about relationships, identity, and what it means to feel whole when everything around you is in flux. “My whole songwriting process is basically therapy,” Annibale says with a laugh. “I write in transitional periods. This record came from asking, ‘What do I need going forward? What do I let go of?’”
You can hear it in the lyrics, sure, but Annibale’s songwriting is rarely literal. “I’ve always liked songs that obscure the story a bit,” she says. “You can’t quite pin them down. It leaves room for someone else to find their own meaning.”
Which might be why so many people have gravitated toward “Answers,” the gently devastating ballad from her last album. “It’s probably the saddest song I’ve ever written,” she says.
That track landed on a mega-popular playlist called Your Favorite Coffeehouse and hasn’t left since. “It’s been on there for over a year,” she says. “Six million streams later, I had to start playing it again at shows.”
Annibale’s also no stranger to the mystical world of TV placements, where your song can suddenly soundtrack a teary Grey’s Anatomy breakup—or worse, an OR bloodbath. “I’m really squeamish,” she admits. “I’d never watched Grey’s Anatomy before, but I had to see the episode with my song. Luckily, my scene was surgery-free.”
She got her start in that world back in 2012 with One Tree Hill, back when TV dramas had actual theme songs and Brooke still watched the CW. “I used to watch it in high school,” she says. “Then I started catching up just to understand the scene my song was in.”
Now she’s the one scoring other people’s emotional breakdowns. And if Hold to the Light is any indication, it’s not just the sad songs that are striking a chord—it’s the space between heartbreak and healing.
“I write about relationships a lot—family, partners, everyone,” she says. “Sometimes people think it’s a love song when it’s really about something else. But that’s fine. If it speaks to them, I’m doing my job.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below!
