Starting in 1997, Australian alternative singer-songwriter, Diana Anaid’s career highlights, include US Billboard Top 40 placement, 5 ARIA nominations, 2 inclusions in Triple J’s Hottest 100 and sets at the BDO, Falls, Vans Warped, Woodford and Byron Blues Fest. Her latest album, “My Queen” marks the artist’s return after a brief hiatus. The 11 songs were co-written by Nathan Correy and produced by ARIA award winner Steve James (Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees). The album was mastered in the UK by Tim Young (Massive Attack/Madonna ), while the video clip for the song “Can’t Apologise” was done by Rock n Roll Hall of Fame recipient Nick Egan (Oasis, Duran Duran). The list of impressive contributors to this recording already give us the measure of the artist before we hear a single note.
Diana Anaid has always been original, and it’s easy to look towards an artist like her with assuredness that the socially conscious song will never die. On her latest album, she consistently proves her ability to craft deeper and more intricate prose. A balance of anthems and poems, “My Queen” delivers the complementary music and lyrics that fans have come to expect from her.
This recording is a rich amalgamation of Diana’s lyricism and social sensitivity, which is bound to ignite a reactive impulse in any listener with an inclination to go against the grain. She is a voice among those, who are more outspoken and more diverse.
The singles “Can’t Apologise” and “Better Girl” empathize with her transgender sister’s inspiring story, while the title track, “My Queen”, discusses freeing our minds of social constraints. Elsewhere Diana tackles powerful issues like death, love, child abuse, domestic violence, and sexuality.
These narratives are born in the fearless area between defiance and freedom. It is a means to an end which, if you understand Diana Anaid’s mindset, is far greater than the sum of its parts. Diana gives form to this recording, by hand-picking her gripes with life and society from her personal experiences to deliver the best she has to offer to the current singer-songwriter movement.
For her most dedicated fans, “My Queen” will prove both gratifying and unifying. For newcomers, Diana Anaid is a beacon as an enlightened voice in a collective choir singing for change. Her fierce individuality is part of her appeal, along with her sharp lyrical wit and flair for balancing the social with the personal in her prolific output of guitar-driven songs.
From “Into Your Heart”, to “Reassure Me” and “Braveheart” to “Twisted Love” and finally “Fallen For You”, Diana is a ball of unstoppable feisty energy, and unafraid as ever to tell it like it is and stick to her word.
Mature is a tricky word when applied to an artist who already seemed to have achieved that status twenty years ago, but there is a musical maturity here for sure. Lyrically, there’s more wisdom, more experience and more clarity, as impossible as that may seem. “My Queen” is an album which is drenched through with the sort of confidence that only an artist with Diana Anaid’s kind of experience can bring.
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