New Music: Anna Grace Odom – May To One

Doubt can often get us thinking of family, and how sometimes, they can be there for us without them even knowing.

It’s something that beats at the heart of May To One (originally titled May 21), the latest single from Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and musician Anna Grace Odom, a song where the emotional tide and waves swell in tandem with the arrangement.

It starts in minimal style, vocals, an electronic hum, and an acoustic guitar that feels as aged as the life-worn vocals. The song grows in confidence, the dark soundscapes of Ethel Cain mixing with the heavyweight pastoral nostalgia of Sungaze, the sound of a life learning to be lived in a time of change.

“This song is a confession and an offering,” says Odom about the song, which was released, appropriately enough, on the 21st of May via Soliloquy Records. “I wrote it on my little brother’s birthday, in the spot in my childhood bedroom where I wrote every song as a teenager. I’d just finished my first year of college and was feeling like I was letting everyone down at once (family, friends, God, myself).”

“I started playing it in clubs around Nashville, and people would come up to tell me what the song meant to them; how it conveyed their own feelings of guilt and shame. It was the first time I’d written something like that.”

“Later recorded with Max Colbert at his home studio, the acoustic guitar in the intro is his grandfather’s (warped from years of sitting on a cold Canadian porch). I was feeling inspired by artists like Wednesday, mercury, Jake Minch, etc.”

Find out more about Anna Grace Odom by following her on Instagram or TikTok. You can hear May To One and more music from the artist on Spotify, as well as SoundCloud and YouTube.

Header photo by Ben H Burton