Track Listing

1. Intro
2. Chewing Gum
3. Always Too Late
4. Me Plus One
5. My Heartbeat
6. Helpless Fool For Love
7. Anniemal
8. No Easy Love
9. Happy Without You
10. Greatest Hit
11. Come Together
12. My Best Friend

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12807 in Music
• Released on: 2005-03-07
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Norwegian singer/songwriter Annie (Anne Lilia Berge Strand) makes her full-length debut with what must surely be the year's sunniest album. Not since the days of The Tom Tom Club, Bananarama, and "Lucky Star"-era Madonna, has dance-pop been this fun, this bouncy, this unabashedly optimistic (1999 single "Greatest Hit" even samples the latter's "Everybody"). So don't say you haven't been warned: Anniemal is a pretension-free zone. With its "Oh no, oh no / You've got it all wrong / You think you're chocolate / But you're chewing gum" refrain, 2004's insanely addictive single "Chewing Gum" is the jewel in this sparkling crown. The R2D2-like bloops and bleeps and Annie's sweet "ah-ah-ahs" and "la-la-las" just make it shine all the brighter. Hippie-disco extravaganza "Come Together," which tops the seven-minute mark, is another standout, while the sentimental "My Best Friend" is, arguably, the only clunker on one of 2005's most notable releases. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

CD Description
This is the debut album from Norwegian singer Annie. Featuring production work from fellow Bergen residents Royksopp and the UK's Richard X, the album mixes Annie's sultry vocal tones with warm radio friendly electronic pop. The infectiousdebut single 'Chewing Gum' is also included.

Customer Reviews

Mrs B, Mrs E, Mrs A-U-T, Mrs I, Mrs F-U-L!
This album is a masterpiece! Featuring production from Richard X on "Chewing Gum" and "Me Plus One", the album "Anniemal" is a great collection of uplifting pop pleasures, dance grooves and disco funks. Along with the Richard X tracks, highlight tracks include "Always Too Late", "My Heartbeat", "Helpless Fool For Love" and "Greatest Hit" (featuring a sample of "Everybody" by Madonna) among many others. Get it!

the best pop music you could hope for
if you usually stay away from mainstream pop radio, but thought 'toxic' was a really good track, you should check out annie.

I came across annie by accident: around midnight one night in barcelona, I stumbled across some friends who were going to a club called razzmatazz, and they asked if I wanted to tag along. I went, got tired of the giant main dance floor, and started wandering around. I found a room called the 'pop bar' or something, and on the small stage, with not much attention being paid to her by the jaded barcelona hipster kids, was a demurely-clad norwegian blonde singing understated pop songs without any flashy lights, choreography, costume changes, or anything else you might associate with a pop princess. she said her name was annie, and when a few weeks later I saw anniemal on a record store shelf, I didn't think twice about buying it.

you shouldn't either. all the songs not only hold up to scrutiny and can hold their own as legitimate pop, they're also actually really good. 'always too late' does destiny's child better than destiny's child, and also improves on their lyricism quite a bit. the backing beat isn't cookie-cutter r&b either: it has the quality of being both sparse and lush at the same time, much like annie's voice. she leaves out all that vocal melisma that plagues most pop (see 'pop idol') and just sticks to the melody, making sure to drip loads of dreamy sensuality over every line.

'me plus one' is perhaps the best pop track on the album, narrowly beating 'chewing gum'. both are pure roller-disco-and-bubblegum pop pleasure without feeling eager or dated. 'greatest hit' is so understated and cool, it should win some sort of trophy that has a disco ball on the top. and of course there's 'come together', the nearly-8-minute disco-dance extravaganza, which could bring a dancefloor with the population of south america to its knees. and the best track is 'my heartbeat', which is the most emotional, lush, and musically interesting track on the album.

so if you doubt the power of pop music, it's probably because of what gets passed off as pop music these days. listen to annie and you'll realise that pop isn't some genre made specifically to piss off stuffy 16 year-old guitar players. there's power in the ability to get people to dance, and annie uses this power with great responsibility. she's like the spiderman of pop.

also, if you like annie, check out a band called out hud.

Anniemal - a strange but beautiful beast.
Imagine a very strange pop cocktail: start with a large shot of new millennium Kylie, add a dose of Rachel Stevens at her best and finally fill up the glass with that fizzy quirkiness that, more than often than one might expect, has made the Scandinavian countries legendary for producing more good music than their small populations might suggest reasonable. If you can you might just have some idea of what to expect from 'Anniemal'.
Annie is from Norway and this is her debut effort but you would never guess. Neither conservative nor self consciously weird in style or content - it is very listenable from the start and only gets better with repeated listening. That it is a more than competent debut is a fact; what slowly dawns is that it is a stunningly confident one. It combines a mixture of electronica with pure pop, touches of R 'n' B and rock, plus a noticeable dance sensibility in a way that is somehow quite lacking in self-consciousness, let alone any pretension. It is one of those rare albums that give the impression of being created rather than planned perhaps helped by the fact that she co-wrote and produce the majority of the tracks

It starts with 'Intro', which has Annie talking over a variety of bleeps and electronic anniemal noises. This is followed by the Richard X produced 'Chewing Gum' along with the quite different sounding 'Me Plus One'. As he produced Rachel Steven's 'Some Girls' the connection is certainly there.
Another outstanding track is 'Heartbeat' again co-written and produced by Annie. Many a well-established artist would kill for a track like this, while on the other hand the rather happy dance influenced 'Greatest Hit' (As someone suggested to me this is slightly reminiscent of Faithless tracks featuring Dido, but on Prozac!) samples 'Everybody' by Madonna, who is undoubtedly a big influence on Annie's music.
The title track 'Anniemal' seems to me to be a very subtle parody of Abba. The opening lines, " She's a locked up girl, in a RICH MAN'S WORLD" - 'Money, Money, Money' (!) and it goes on, but it is far too clever to ever be crass.

It is very hard to find a filler track on this album, or indeed even a predictable one. It really is that good. If you like pop with a difference then this is worth a listen. Why only 4 stars then? - Well someone this talented has potential to do even better and the scale runs out at five...