When you loose that sparkle….

My dear loved ones and readers,

Since I get so many questions about my career as a singer, a new album and so on I feel I need to open my chest about how I feel about this and my future within music so here we go:

I don't want the blog to be all about shallowness and beauty but also some words about me and how I feel now and then since I believe its good to share what we learn in life so that someone else might not do the same "mistakes"

In my life all I wanted was to sing, from when I was so little, a couple of years old, I have always said I ´m going to be a singer.

During my life, singing has given me comfort when I have been feeling sad, down and also happy. When I was bullied in school I always went home and sang my lungs out and cried and it made me COPE with the bullying and being strong throughout the years.

When I was 21 and started Balettakademin I was so thrilled to become a musical artist and I went for it with such joy and happiness the first weeks but since the school was so focused on thin bodies and telling us to NOT eat and smoke more cigarettes I found myself being more and more depressed and loosing faith in becoming a singer. Cause I couldn't understand why a singer need to look a certain way  and being bullied AGAIN was just enough for me.

I left the school, my dream, and didn't sing for half a year. NOT a damn note came over my lips. I lost faith and wanting to become a singer.

But since music has always been my life savior I couldn't keep off it for long and finally started singing again with Alyson avenue, my band, that I loved and where I felt I could be ME and sing MY way. Niclas lyrics and music were easy, happy tunes and it made me feel alive again.

The other guys in the band never wanted fame but I felt I needed to pursue my dream once more and started to work more in the studio with other bands and earned money in many ways. Singing at lovely weddings, baptisms, at parties and so on and it was FUN and no worries.

Then after I got my first son Seth I wanted to study in the university to get a real diploma and a great job and I started pursuing this and put my focus on a normal life. A normal job and letting go of the dream of working as a singer full time since so many times I´ve seen the music business bad sides when record labels wanted to sign me but demanded me to dress in tiny outfits and change my person complete. I just can't give up on who I am and my beliefs for someone else's desire.

I remember being with a record label guy in Copenhagen, trying out a song to be signed with them, where I took my boyfriend with me to keep me safe, since I didn't know these people, I was quite young and after just talking via the phone, who knows who these people would be?

When we had been in the studio recording all day, me doing a great job, them liking it, my bf sitting quietly in a corner, not disturbing, the record label producer takes me to the side, saying quietly; you know, Anette, in the music business the golden rule is to NEVER bring your boyfriend to the studio.

...when he said that I knew that it was all just a lot of bullshit and that all he really wanted was probably something totally different than me singing.

Disgusting and once again I lost faith to the business side of music...

So many sick and disturbing men I´ve met along these years that uses women and using their power. Promoters using girls that only want to meet the band, telling them to do sexual favors and then they´ll get them in to the backstage,..

As a woman being in the music business I am not the first one to tell that its a man´s world and it´s making me tired and sick and even the fans only take the men´s sides. 

It make me sad, it make me tired and it has made me loose all the sparkle for music and singing.

I prefer to be in the "normal" world, the normal working business, going to my summer job, taking care of my elderly people and pursuing my career as a nurse, where I get RESPECT for what I do. No one cares HOW I look, no one talks sex-talk with me, trying to make me feel disrespected as a woman and where I get appreciated for being a kind, warm, caring person. Not demanding me to put out my hard elbows and be tough, not ever showing myself sensitive, having a bad day, crying on stage after endless tours loosing sleep, missing my kids, being told I am FAT from the people I work with when being pregnant and so on..

Well the list is LONG and endless of all the things I have had to put up with.

And to all those out there who want to say I am ungrateful person, a person who complains and whine - well let me do it. I am the only one who have been there, seen the backsides you haven't and felt the things I´ve done.

In the music business its always a lot of people trying to take advantage of you, stealing your money and talking BIG but then its all a balloon that pops and out comes nothing of what they´ve said you´d get.

Being in the music business is about being in a world of DREAMERS who normally have NO CLUE of how it is to live in the real world. Sad but true…

Since 2012 my sparkle to sing is lost and I don't know if it will ever come back but I am actually more happy today studying to be a nurse and I feel my life is richer now than it has ever been before.

ENJOY your day!