Michaela Anne Explores the Tension Between Joy and Self-Destruction on Anti-Love Song “Does It Ever Break Your Heart"

“I just know that I don’t want to be alone,” Michaela Anne sings on her new single “Does It Ever Break Your Heart.” With swelling synths, atmospheric layered vocals, and a steady pulsating heartbeat, the song tells the honest truth about relationships: we often confuse love and lust, manipulation and sincerity, addiction and health. But despite the push and pull of happiness and self-destruction, sometimes we stay in relationships we know we should walk away from. “We can go from feeling such love for a person, blind to or denying the red flags and toxicity, to then destroying each other in the process of realization,” says Michaela. Although the Nashville singer-songwriter ends up leaving the relationship in the final chorus, the song’s stunning arrangement, which eloquently shifts between sonic beauty and chaotic dissonance, conveys a more complicated ending before it fades out into the abyss.

Watch the powerfully meditative official music video for “Does It Ever Break Your Heart,” filmed with her toes in the sand as the endless waves ebb and flow, here: https://youtu.be/-KWBZkEmw6Y 

Michaela Anne’s new album Oh To Be That Free is set for release on June 10th via Yep Roc. The eleven-song collection is lush and cinematic, at times channeling the cosmic country of Emmylou Harris while also hinting at Brandi Carlile with its indie-folk storytelling, Kacey Musgraves with its sprawling swells of strings, and Shania Twain with its catchy pop melodies. Written before the foundation-shaking events she faced during the global pandemic - including nearly losing her mother to a hemorrhagic stroke while pregnant with her first child - Michaela found a deeply-prescient new significance in these songs while confronting life’s unimaginable challenges. Oh To Be That Free is profoundly vulnerable, touching on themes of gratitude, self-sabotage, nature, mindfulness and motherhood. Her delivery is tender and empathetic as she reckons with the flaws and faults that keep us up at night and insists we’re worthy of love not in spite of our shortcomings, but because of them. Listen to the soaring album opener “I’m only human,” a glorious celebration of the power in losing control, here: https://ffm.to/ohtobethatfree

Read/listen to Michaela Anne’s recent interview with Reckon South here: https://www.reckonsouth.com/michaela-anne-found-healing-and-comfort-in-her-new-album-oh-to-be-that-free/

Following a US tour with the Milk Carton Kids in April, Michaela Anne is confirmed for NPR Mountain Stage on May 22, 2022 and will be returning to Bonnaroo this June. More info on Michaela Anne here: https://www.michaelaanne.com/