Prague-based artist NOANNE just dropped her single Suite 17 in collaboration with Gregory Darling, and it’s haunting and cinematic, while reforming everything we thought we knew about the intersection of songwriting and storytelling. While diving further into NOANNE’s artistry and inspiration, I learned that her creativity is boundless, cutting-edge, and rooted in her deep empathy for raw emotional performance.
NOANNE has always felt like an exposed nerve when it came to connecting with theatre. This sensitivity may dredge up challenges in day-to-day life, but in her artistry, it became her superpower. She shares some of her earliest and favorite memories interacting with theatre, music, and the type of performance that made her forget she was watching a performance altogether: “I am the kind of person who cries during almost every dramatic scene and becomes emotional over the smallest, most tender things. One of the performances that completely changed my understanding of live singing was an old recording of Lara Fabian performing ‘Je suis malade.’ I was overwhelmed by the emotional content of it. That performance taught me that technical excellence matters, but emotion is what makes an audience remember.” She also cites Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing” and Roger Waters’ rendition of “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
NOANNE’s path from theatre to music stemmed from rejection, and what a blessing, because it allowed her the space to build her own world as opposed to fitting into a box. Though theatre and music were always entangled, she knew she could inch closer to her own truth, stories, and POV with music. “As an actor, you are constantly waiting for someone else to choose you—to decide whether your face, voice, personality or interpretation belongs inside their story. You can prepare deeply, care enormously and still be rejected for reasons that have very little to do with your ability. Eventually, I realized that I did not want to wait forever for permission to perform or to tell a story.” She picked up a ukulele and wrote “Goodwill” in 10-15 minutes. This represented a pivotal moment for NOANNE. “I started becoming the author of my own artistic opportunities rather than only auditioning for someone else’s vision.” Her new era in songwriting was validated and amplified when she met Gregory Darling, who saw something special in her and helped take her song to the next level. When you listen to “Goodwill,” the grandiose arrangement makes it hard to believe it was born in 15 minutes on ukulele.
Another way NOANNE took “rejection” and made it bloom into something uniquely her own is in her production of “Goodwill,” the live show, at Prague’s iconic Royal Theatre. The show fuses live music, narrative, projections, costumes, and more. “I wanted to build an environment in which the songs could fully reveal themselves, rather than having to adapt them to a space that was never designed for them,” she shares.
NOANNE’s vocals alone are stunning, but her melodies demand the spotlight, freezing you in your tracks, transfixing you up until the completion of the track. “Suite 17” is less a vocal spotlight moment for NOANNE and more a sonic Hitchcock thriller. Darling provides the more classic structural verses, while NOANNE sings over and under his narration. NOANNE’s parts embody a character known as “Jack,” who represents a seductive force feeding off temptation and past habits you know you shouldn’t indulge in. “Jack” is a big part of what I meant when I mentioned NOANNE’s songwriting and storytelling shooting past boundaries many artists don’t touch. There are plenty of songs where the singer speaks from another perspective, but in “Suite 17,” the characters sing back and forth to each other with such specific discourse; a deeply intentional push and pull. The dreamy orchestral backing behind the voices adds an undeniable layer of beauty to the edgy, dark vocal melodies and lyrics. “Suite 17” as a title plays on the duality between “suite” and “sweet,” exploring the fine line between seduction and destruction, intimacy and obsession.
NOANNE’s dramatic, dark, avant-garde style is evident in everything she creates. Her single alone, acting as a sonic Hitchcock movie, makes me deeply eager to await a full-length project. While we can expect certain things, we could also never know what she has in store, and that makes for a truly original artist.
