The Artist Explains: Anjulie - 'Baghdad' (Single)
LA-based singer-songwriter Anjulie speaks about her powerful single 'Baghad', influenced by 2016’s Karrada suicide bombing.
Led by Anjulie's poignant vocal and accompanied by minimal yet fiercely affecting backing - 'Bagdhad' is a devastatingly beautiful 2 minutes 4 seconds of raw, thought-provoking, socio-political commentary, calling for sense and solidarity in a senseless, ignorant world.
Anjulie Explains:
"On July 4th 2016 I was on my way to an independence day celebration in the Hollywood Hills at the house of a beautiful actress and her boyfriend and as a person who is guilty of being perpetually late it was already night-time so fireworks were already going off. I quickly checked my twitter feed and noticed someone posted something about Baghdad. While the sounds of muffled explosions were poppin off outside my window, on the other side of the world a completely different kind of explosion was going on. One that would end up killing 300 innocent people including women and children. The strange thing is that while I was scrolling through my socials I couldn’t find anyone reacting to the bombing. I had seen a lot of hashtags for Orlando and Paris and Nice and Turkey, hashtags for black lives matter and blue lives matter and all lives matter but nothing about 300 people being snuffed out in Baghdad.
So why? Why was the public outcry almost non existent? How come some people’s pain is so easy to dismiss? And what would it feel like to be a kid there who’s mother or father or sister or brother was killed because of the fall out of a superfluous war on terror and a government that failed to protect them? I was in no mood to celebrate after seeing the horrific news so as any emo musician would do, I decided not to go to the party and sat down in my underwear at the keyboard in my living room instead and started singing about how I felt. I quickly uploaded the video, ate a few chocolate flavoured protein bars for dinner and went to bed. In the morning I noticed the video had over 50 thousand views and by that night it tripled and would go on to reach over a million impressions that month. The outpour of comments and love I received was overwhelming. My background is in the music industry. I’ve written for artists like Nicki Minaj, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, Zedd, Icona Pop etc some of my songs have gotten over a hundred million views on Youtube but I have never been able to strike a chord with humanity in the way that I did on July 4th 2016. I wouldn’t say the video went viral, it has nothing to do with kittens or porn, but it did connect me to a community of people who have given me new found hope in the things I once believed in as a child and lost somewhere along the way. I posted that song to reach out to the people of Baghdad and Iraq and just let them know that someone was listening. The irony is that’s what they ended up doing for me."
So why? Why was the public outcry almost non existent? How come some people’s pain is so easy to dismiss? And what would it feel like to be a kid there who’s mother or father or sister or brother was killed because of the fall out of a superfluous war on terror and a government that failed to protect them? I was in no mood to celebrate after seeing the horrific news so as any emo musician would do, I decided not to go to the party and sat down in my underwear at the keyboard in my living room instead and started singing about how I felt. I quickly uploaded the video, ate a few chocolate flavoured protein bars for dinner and went to bed. In the morning I noticed the video had over 50 thousand views and by that night it tripled and would go on to reach over a million impressions that month. The outpour of comments and love I received was overwhelming. My background is in the music industry. I’ve written for artists like Nicki Minaj, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, Zedd, Icona Pop etc some of my songs have gotten over a hundred million views on Youtube but I have never been able to strike a chord with humanity in the way that I did on July 4th 2016. I wouldn’t say the video went viral, it has nothing to do with kittens or porn, but it did connect me to a community of people who have given me new found hope in the things I once believed in as a child and lost somewhere along the way. I posted that song to reach out to the people of Baghdad and Iraq and just let them know that someone was listening. The irony is that’s what they ended up doing for me."