With sophisticated lyricism, boldly engineered backing tracks, and a fearless sense of artistic identity, singer/songwriter Annie DiRusso’s debut album ‘Super Pedestrian’ boasts a musical maturity far beyond her years.

Stream: ‘Super Pedestrian’ – Annie DiRusso

Annie DiRusso’s debut album, Super Pedestrian, is a striking introduction to an artist who is both deeply grounded and boldly experimental.

Released in early March via Summer Soup Songs, Super Pedestrian takes listeners on a journey through the struggles and triumphs of growing older, viewed through the lens of a more mature self. Through her signature blend of poetic lyricism, sonic exploration, and reflective perspective, DiRusso crafts an album that feels like anything but a debut. If this is an indication of where DiRusso is beginning, there is no telling what heights she will reach with future releases.

Speaking to Atwood Magazine, DiRusso admits that on her last tour, she felt stuck. “I kind of lost touch with my current self, in a way, because I was playing songs I wrote when I was 20 and wearing the dress I wore when I was 20,” she says. Rather than trying to leave her younger self behind, DiRusso treats her with care. “Girl born on a Tuesday, I hеar my dad when I hear the train / A C-sеction baby, my mom cut herself open for me,” she croons in Super Pedestrian‘s opening track, “Ovid.”

While navigating her adult relationships in a crossroads period of her life, DiRusso honors her family ties, her roots in New York, and the home she found in Nashville. “Leo,” the third track in the album, is a testament to her brother, which DiRusso admits was “a curveball song.” This song pairs well with a later track, “Derek Jeter,” which features a rambling voice message from her father reflecting on the baseball legend.

Tracks like “Derek Jeter” provide a moment of pause between heavily engineered tracks such as “Back in Town.”

“[That] was a huge labor of love,” DiRusso shares. “It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. But we were trying to leave no stone unturned … I wanted to go full pop and go for perfection on every word.” The track begins with an almost imperceptible beep, a perfect testament to the level of detail and scrutiny put into the song. Every moment, every trill of the piano, every shift in sound feels delicately put into place, contrasting with the heavy barrage of sound. When DiRusso reaches the bridge, she almost wails, “You know I’d be your girl if you would only ask,” and the self-assured attempts at nonchalance unravel as the song progresses. After the bridge, there’s a moment of silence before a restrained drumbeat launches us into the full brilliance of this heavily layered track. The track ends with a far-off chuckle and an “oh god,” a perfect summation of the journey DiRusso takes us on.

It’s clear DiRusso took inspiration from other art forms, such as poetry and visual art.

Each song is embedded with lyrical jewels that feel like they were pulled straight from a sonnet. A personal favorite is “We kiss like we’re talking,” from the viciously biting “Legs.” The simplicity of these moments makes them seem effortless, but DiRusso lets me know just how much consideration was put into every word. “Songwriting is mostly all about being as concise as possible; it’s kind of like a puzzle in that way,” DiRusso muses. Super Pedestrian certainly feels like a jigsaw where every oddly shaped piece fits snugly into place.

It is difficult to pinpoint just what makes this album the masterpiece it is. DiRusso’s “labor of love” is apparent in every track, even the ones that would be considered to be filler. These “filler tracks,” such as “Derek Jeter,” allow us to take a moment to celebrate with DiRusso and have fun between her epic musings on past relationships and experiences. This does not detract from the excellence of the weightier songs, such as “Hungry” and “Wet.” This rhythmic ordering of tracks makes the entire album feel like a mountainous journey, peaking and dipping in all the right places.

Even the cover art was carefully decided. DiRusso sketched out concepts for months, ultimately settling on a fantastical portrait of herself as a centaur, the ultimate Super Pedestrian. It captures the takeaway message of the album, which DiRusso puts beautifully: “It’s me getting myself where I need to go.”

In Super Pedestrian, Annie DiRusso has created a work that’s as multifaceted and deeply personal as it is artistically brilliant, inviting listeners to accompany her on the complex, rewarding journey of self-discovery.

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:: stream/purchase Super Pedestrian here ::

:: connect with Annie DiRusso here ::

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“Good Ass Movie” – Annie DiRusso

A CONVERSATION WITH ANNIE DIRUSSO

Annie DiRusso: It’s been really, really cool. There’s a lot of things about it that don’t feel like a debut album. It’s not a collection of songs I’ve had for five years, you know, I wrote them all within like six months of each other. And, yeah, I had been releasing music for so many years before. I did an EP. I’ve done a bunch of singles, but it really has felt different to have a record. I feel like, Oh, I’m a real artist or something. I don’t know why it, but it totally felt different. I didn’t expect it to. It’s also cool to be able to give people more than just what you can fit into one song, and be able to explore different sounds and themes to create something a little bit more full on.

DiRusso: I had been on a really long tour. I’d been touring for almost two years pretty consistently, with some weeks off, but I was really at it for a while. I kind of lost touch with my current self, in a way, because I was playing songs I wrote when I was 20 and wearing the dress I wore when I was 20 and doing the whole thing, and it was the most beautiful time in my life. But I totally had lost touch with my current taste and also reality. When you’re touring, you’re in this specific microcosm of the van, and it’s the most cool and beautiful thing, but it does kind of take you out of the normal swing of life. Getting back to Nashville and doing Party July was huge for me. I didn’t fall into the post-tour depression. I was just like, Okay, I’ve gotta live a little life. I’ve been working so much and touring so much and living life in that respect. I got to see so many things and did such exciting stuff, but I wasn’t in a normal routine, hanging out with my friends and going out and stuff like that. So I went into that space, and I really did just have such a good time, and my priorities shifted a lot in a way that was really helpful. I wasn’t feeling like, I need to write. I need to write. I was just living life. And then the writing became much more natural for me than it had ever been before. It was kind of like a turning point, I would say, in general. Party July, Party August, probably like half Party September, because my birthday is in September, and I wrote most of the record during this time, writing with friends and having fun. I had so much to say, because I was experiencing so much life and open to taking it in. And then in the fall, I kind of locked in a little bit.

Eden Joel helped co-produce a bunch of songs on the record and is honestly just one of my best friends, he played guitar in my band for a long time. He had gone with me to Guitar Center because I wanted to figure out how to get a set up to make my own demos. He showed me what to buy, and then I started demoing, “Legs.” He came over, and said, Oh, this is sick. And I was like, Can you cut some bass on it? He’s like, Wait, let’s go back to my house. I have more equipment. And then him and I spent three days so excited. He’s 19 at the time. [It’s] a 19 year old boy’s bedroom, you know, like the drum kit’s there, his laundry is hanging on it, and we just made “Legs.” We had this excitement [that] we’re both doing something we’ve never really done before, and we’re having so much fun. We were discovering this new world, which I feel like is a very, very rare feeling. I feel so lucky that we were able to capture that. And that’s when I was like, This is how I want to feel making this record. I was so excited to be doing it with Eden, and we demoed out a bunch of stuff and then brought it to Caleb Wright, who produced the record.

DiRusso: Both have been incredibly influential. I was in both places at very different times in my life. I spent so many of my formative years in Nashville, and I think that the emphasis on the craft of songwriting in Nashville was incredibly impactful for me and very inspirational. Some of the best songwriting I’ve ever heard, I heard in Nashville, and I think New York is almost a little bit more aesthetically focused, which is also incredibly important. So I do think there’s an artistry aspect of New York that really excites me, and a songwriting aspect of Nashville that really excites me. I feel lucky to have been able to observe both. Nashville is very, very special to me, and I’m moving back to New York right now, so I’m very reflective. The way that music is so collaborative in Nashville is something that’s very, very special, and I feel lucky to have gotten to do that.

DiRusso: I guess it’s difficult to be actively releasing the songs, but it’s just always what I write. I don’t really feel like I have much control over it, it is always what I write and what impacts me when I’m writing. Like, this is something I want to say. I think it can make releasing things a little bit uncomfortable, but I do think I’m kind of used to it at this point. I’m not a very confrontational person with myself or others. I don’t really like to confront my feelings sometimes. I feel like, if I weren’t a songwriter, I wouldn’t do that. So I feel very lucky that I am a songwriter, because I think it forces me to be a bit more introspective than I would lean to otherwise.

DiRusso: It’s been pretty impactful. I started releasing songs in I think 2018 or 2019 and had some following just from Spotify algorithms, but nothing that was going to make people come to a show type of thing. And then when COVID hit, it was kind of like, Okay, I can’t build a fan base by opening for people on tour, which had always been my dream. I always really wanted to tour. So I just posted on Tiktok. The first video I posted did well, and I was pretty shocked by it. My guitarist at the time was like, What’s the harm if 200 people see it, it’s 200 new people seeing it. And then a bunch of people saw it, and it was this video of me playing a song called 20. I feel like I got really lucky in that it connected people to me, not in a way that, my song just went super viral and then no one knew the artist. I don’t know if it was that viral. It had a few hundred thousand views, and it really connected people to me more in a face-to-name way.

I think that really changed the game for me, because then as soon as COVID was over, I opened on Samia’s tour, which was my first big North American tour. Right after that, I was able to do my first headline tour of the country, which is a really lucky thing. The people who come to the shows are so cool and, like, just wear cool outfits and aren’t afraid to sing along and hang and chill. There’s so much stigma surrounding Tiktok and social media. When I realized, especially during COVID, everyone’s on [social media]. Of course, you’re gonna find an audience that can connect to it. So it’s been incredibly impactful. Being an artist that did grow on social media, there’s some expectation around it from industry people that is unfortunate, but I still feel really lucky that I was able to grow such an awesome and caring following for live shows through it.

DiRusso: I always think I’m a much better writer when I’m reading, if that makes sense, I think there’s a few reasons why, but seeing how other people are using words is so inspiring to me. Songwriting is mostly all about being as concise as possible, it’s kind of like a puzzle in that way. So reading poetry like “Crush,” I mean, [Richard Siken] is a master of that. It’s so inspiring. I was also reading Louise Gluck’s life works during that time. It is incredibly helpful to see how other people are employing the English language. There’s so many themes of humanity within writing that I think is always inspirational to me. I was also reading “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. It was the first book I got back into since being on tour. It was, one of those books. I was like, fuck. I love reading. I forgot that. And.It talks about the creative process and creative collaboration, but I was so interested that the collaboration process was just the same as making music with people. That book totally influenced me in writing some of the songs on the record, too. I think it reading stuff and stimulating your mind to think about different things is so helpful.

DiRusso: There are a lot of different things that ended up touching the record I can see in retrospect. I’m sure I’ll continue to uncover more and more of that, but I do feel like a lot of it is just what I happened to be listening to at the time. I was listening to a lot of pop music, and then a lot of older country music, and then, of course, the indie rock stuff I love and some instrumental music. Also, for the first time, I was taking really long walks that were really inspiring to me. I was just walking around all day, every day in Nashville in my new neighborhood that I’d moved into. Also going to see visual art in person is very inspiring to me.

I forget the name of the artist, but the Frist in Nashville did this exhibit where this guy made these incredibly intricate paintings, these big, very detail-heavy pieces that were almost photorealistic, but not really. He had this one piece that was this giant room in this house. And all of his pieces that he’s ever made were pieces in the house. So he recreated his own pieces within this one piece. I was there with my friends. We were just looking at it for so long. It was one of the most unbelievable, complex pieces of art I’ve ever seen. And making a record felt like a huge undertaking for me, because I’d never made a record, and songwriting had been a pretty slow process for me, historically. Seeing that, it was like, Oh, there are much bigger undertakings than this. It made me really excited to be an artist for a long time.

DiRusso: I was a huge Percy Jackson girl, and that kind of stuff. I’ve always leaned towards ideas like that. I love an on-the-nose, silly but fun idea for visuals. When I came up with the album name “Super Pedestrian,” I was just sketching out the worst possible sketches you can imagine, I have no skill in drawing, of what hat could look like. It was me on my back just riding my shoulders; me in a Flintstone vehicle where there’s ten of me running down the street; a horse drawn carriage, but it’s me instead of horses. And then when I was talking to my best friend Loretta about it, we came to the centaur thing.

In the original idea, I really wanted to also be on my back. I wanted to be me riding myself, which ended up being the tour poster, because it was a little too goofy for the album poster. It’s just such an on-the-nose, visual representation of “Super Pedestrian.” It’s me getting myself where I need to go. And there’s a “Super” element, and “Pedestrian” is the centaur. I knew when there were only three or four songs done that that was going to be the album cover, and I stuck with it, and I’m so happy I did. It feels very true to me, and also true to a younger self, which is really special.

It’s just such an on-the-nose, visual representation of “Super Pedestrian.” It’s me getting myself where I need to go.

DiRusso: That song is also one of my favorites on the record. Ironically, when I actually recorded it, I listened to it sometimes to get pumped up. When Eden and I were working on the demo for “Back in Town,” in October, November 2023… “Back in Town” was a huge labor of love. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made, and I had the best time making it. But we were trying to leave no stone unturned. It’s the most pop song I have in my repertoire. I wanted to go full pop and go for perfection on every word and everything. We were so caught on the post chorus melody that we were going back and forth all day. I had like, 100 recordings of different ones, and we were getting a headache. We were losing our minds. And then we were like, “Okay, we need a palette cleanser.” Eden just started playing the chords on guitar, and I think I got on drums actually, and we just jammed out on that. I just had in my notes, Derek Jeter, and I just knew I wanted a song called Derek Jeter. So I taught Eden the Derek Jeter chant, because he’s from Tennessee.

Then our friend Samia came over to do background vocals on “Back in Town,” and we were like, “Here’s some of the songs.” We played her “Derek Jeter,” and she was like, “Wait, y’all this rips.” And we were like, “Wait, really, just this stupid shit we made?” And she was like, “No, it literally rips.” Then she hopped on some background vocals on “Derek Jeter” as well. There was this whole spoken word verse I was doing, and that’s how the song was living for those few months. Then when we brought it to the studio, I had called my dad and been like, “Hey, can you leave me a voicemail where you talk about Derek Jeter?” Because we were just going to chop it up and put it around the song. Then we’re in the studio, and it had taken him so long to do it, like months for him to send me his voice message. I could tell this was weighing on him, and we’re in the studio, and I finally get the voice message, and it’s two minutes long, and literally, it made me cry. He had obviously taken the time to write down a full script, and he delivered this script, and, he even at one point goes, Ah, gotta start again. Start again.

It’s just perfect. As soon as Caleb, the producer, and Eden, who was also producing, heard it, they were like, We’re cutting your verse. At first, I was like, No, and then as soon as I heard it, I was like, Y’all are right. This is my dad’s song now, and it just kind of all came together, and then we in added 1 billion things to it.

DiRusso: “Leo” was a curveball song for me, because I hadn’t really written about my brother before. I kind of knew for a while I wanted to write a song about my brother. I don’t know if this is like classic sibling vibes but it’s really hard for us to communicate how we feel about each other, or any feelings of love and care. It made the song kind of hard to write, too. I had written him this letter a few months before, and I think he called me and said, “Yeah, I did get your letter. It was really nice, and it was kind of funny to me.”

I didn’t really know exactly what I was writing about when I started the song. And then I think I just happened upon the second half of the first verse, which was, “Jonathan’s on my mind / Immortalized at 25 / Called my brother, we both cried / My brother’s gonna be all right.” And that was like, that’s what this is about. Having a sibling is such a strange thing. Even though he’s my older brother, of course, I worry about him. Probably not as much as he worries about me. But it was just like, yeah, he’s gonna be okay, and that kind of thing. I wrote it strangely acapella, which I’ve never done before, literally banging on a table. And then I brought it to Eden, and we built this track around it. I took a long time to figure out what the chords were. But I’d say that song, like, really came together in the actual studio in North Carolina.

DiRusso: That was a song I had been cooking on for a long time. I had that chorus for a long, long time, and then the verses came together right when we were in the studio recording the record. It was this really sad acoustic track for a while, and then I played it for Eden and Caleb. I really liked what it was saying, but the way I was singing, it was kind of like this, feeling sorry for myself thing. And then Eden was like, what if we just made it really fucking fast? And I was like, okay, and he just hopped on drums, and I hopped on guitar. I was listening to a lot of Jeff Rosenstock at the time, and we took that vibe and ran with it, and it immediately made the song make so much sense. That was one of my favorite days in the studio.

We just jammed on it for so long, because the song isn’t that serious. That’s the whole point. It’s almost commenting on the things take themselves a little too seriously. Like, almost too serious to be productive, if that makes sense, where they’re so concerned about making the coolest thing ever that they don’t even make anything. They’re just talking, talking, talking, talking about it. I would say it’s probably my bitchiest song, but it’s just really funny to me and it’s such a specific type of person. I was inspired by an ex of one of my good friends. I love to play that song live.

It’s very empowering to me, because a huge thing for me when making this record was, I don’t ever want to care about what the men of East Nashville, Bushwick, Dimes Square, or Silver Lake think about what I’m making. That was a huge thesis statement. I don’t give a shit if they think what I’m making is cool, because I don’t care what they think is cool! So basically, I feel like this song kind of represented that a little bit, which is nice.

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:: stream/purchase Super Pedestrian here ::

:: connect with Annie DiRusso here ::

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“Good Ass Movie” – Annie DiRusso

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 © Danica Robinson

Super Pedestrian

 an album by Annie DiRusso