On a warm summer evening in June, Wayne native Annabelle Dinda was gearing up to take the stage. It was her first time opening for folk sensation Noah Kahan on his “The Great Divide” tour, and it was in Citizens Bank Park, the home of her beloved Phillies.
The last time she had performed on home turf was a month earlier at the Lounge at World Stage for around 200 people. This time, she was about to sing in front of a sold-out crowd of around 45,000.
The 25-year-old singer-songwriter was very excited, as she recalled.
“I’m not a huge sports girl, but I do love baseball. I was [like a kid] in the park out there,” said Dinda, 25, on looking around Citizens Bank Park during rehearsals. “[My band and I] walked through the dugouts, I stood on home base, I cried. It was so cool. I could’ve just done that and been done.”
That performance coincided with the first anniversary of her starting to post her music on TikTok. In October of last year, just four months after starting an account, Dinda posted a video of her playing her then unreleased song “The Hand.” It currently sits at 16.7 million views and 2.2 million likes, with praise from popular indie artists like FINNEAS and Gigi Perez.
The song, about the oppressive societal perceptions of women, is now part of her latest album Some Things Never Leave, and is her most popular song by far, with over 55 million streams on Spotify.
@annabellesays this song is called ‘the hand.’ Yes I’m putting it on streaming. this is a run through of the whole thing and it proves that I have to practice like 80 times before I find the breath control and this is only my third run thru ok peace n luv bye
“There were periods of time where I didn’t talk to people, not in an ignoring sense, but because I couldn’t even begin to describe the fabric change of my life,” said Dinda over Zoom from a hotel room in Raleigh, N.C., last month, having been on tour with Kahan for a month at the time of being interviewed.
“It was a huge shift. I was a nanny and I had to quit. The idea of making money from doing music was so alien to me. I’m very grateful for it, but I think I’m maybe about 40% done processing it.”
Springsteen, Sinatra, Demi Lovato
Dinda’s folk rock, Cranberries-esque style of singing captivated TikTok viewers — but she didn’t always have or even want that sound. When she was growing up, her parents would play her Sinatra and Springsteen, while Dinda had a burning desire to sing like the stars she listened to on Disney radio.
“I was absolutely despondent that I couldn’t sing like Demi Lovato. It was one of the worst things that I ever had to come to terms with,” joked Dinda. “I would never sing if I couldn’t belt something, because I thought that’s what good singing was.”
But at a certain point, she said, “you realize your own limits, and then a style comes from singing within those limits.”
Citing influences like Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, whom she heard while hanging out with her older cousins, Dinda was inspired to start writing music. She was 10. Her fans love her in-depth, poetic lyrics, but she always starts a song with a melody.
“I always approach songwriting melody first … I didn’t give a s— about what the lyrics sounded like or what they meant, and that went on for years. Eventually, I thought it might actually matter what I say.”
After graduating from Radnor High School, Dinda made her way to New York City to attend NYU. She took two music classes and quickly “despised it.”
“I’ve met many friends now who did these kinds of music classes, but when I was 18 and meaner and more insecure, I thought those people sucked.”
So she pivoted to crafting her own major in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, studying poetry and philosophy for the rest of college.
“My final concentration was basically the power of poetic language, the philosophy behind it, and how it can reach this ineffable part of being alive that music, too, can play into.”
It was at this time that she started releasing her music independently. Starting out on SoundCloud, Dinda put out six singles in 2019, followed by her first album Nostalgion in 2020. She would go on to release eight singles, three EPs, and two albums before Some Things Never Leave dropped last January.
Her already extensive catalog tends to be unified by two themes: time and grief.
“I think there’s a natural thematic pairing of time and grief, because time runs out and then that’s grief,” said Dinda. “When I was making the first three [albums] from ages 17 to 22, I had so much anxiety. I was going through so much self-transformation and I did a lot of insular work. In general, but even more so then, I mourned many versions of myself.”
In 2024, she released her third album, Sixth Sense, which dealt with a more acute sense of grief after her brother John passed away earlier that year unexpectedly.
“I think all the songs in that, maybe besides two, I wrote in a three-month period after he passed,” said Dinda. “It was interesting because the muscles that I had built talking about the idea of grief and the idea of time for many years, it became that this theme was all I think about now. It became very tangible.”
Forever rooted in Philly
Dinda is based in New York; the album cover for Some Things Never Leave was shot in Prospect Park. But she hasn’t forgotten about her hometown.
“London Plane Trees Grow in Philly,” the six-minute album closer on Some Things Never Leave, delivers a nostalgic, bittersweet love note to her life and family, with lyrics dedicated to her mom and other brother, Henry.
“Henry studied horticulture and he is a landscaper now. I remember being a teenager and loving [London Plane trees], asking him what that tree was, and him explaining that tree to me,” said Dinda. “I’m really happy with the metaphor of an old-rooted thing being in both [New York and Philly]. They’re city trees, too, so they’re everywhere. There’s something kind of bland about them. The most common things can be the most inspiring because they’re so overlooked and utilitarian.”
In May, Dinda played a “Free at Noon” concert at WXPN before embarking on the tour with Kahan. Her family was in the crowd loudly cheering her on throughout the show.
She was selected as the radio station’s “Artist to Watch” for the month of May by WXPN music director Dan Reed, who was introduced to her songs by his son.
“If you’re gonna write these confessional deep lyrics, that’s great, but they’re not going to have a whole lot of staying power if they don’t have a great song behind them,” said Reed. “She’s able to put those two things together, which is really rare.”
@annabellesays release dayyyy 🙂
Coming off the melancholic, nostalgic themes of Some Things Never Leave, Dinda released her upbeat single “Whatever You Wanna” in June. This song feels more like holding your hands outside the window of a car on a road trip, with lyrics telling the romantic, but possibly naive tale of Dinda feeling compelled to do whatever crazy thing her lover wants her to do.
Does this more high-spirited track reflect the tone of Dinda’s next album? She says it’ll be more of a “mixture.”
“I’m always wary of people getting too solid an idea of me,” said Dinda, who has been performing unreleased songs “Fill the Gap” and “Learn Something, Baby!” at smaller shows in between Kahan tour dates.
“This last album we recorded so quickly that there were some elements that were left raw that I’m going to try to thicken and expand. I will always want to experiment more than I am currently. I think if you don’t do that, then what the hell are you doing?”
Dinda will continue to perform with Kahan through August.
After that? She wants to seek more growth, but also a sense of normalcy.
“I’m really interested in, and this is the grandma in me, a slow and steady growth and seeing how that feels,” she said. She wants to record her next album, release it, and tour again next year, and then compare next year with this year to see what she can do differently.
“I was so deeply overwhelmed this year that I was focused on releasing and getting my face and literal body on stages out in the world. I’ll be happy to have a little more time to do music videos and pay real attention to pictures we take,” said Dinda, who wants to focus more on the creative aspects behind the next album’s rollout. “Incrementally growing I’m really excited about, because I don’t want to feel insane, is my goal.”
