Seattle-based singer-songwriter Anna Thompson gets stuck in a dream world with “Dreams About Him,” the lead single from her seven-track debut EP Centerpiece. Inspired by a recurring dream of an ex-boyfriend, “Dreams About Him” weaves through Thompson’s own dreamscape. “I was in a relationship that I wasn’t very happy in at the time,” she tells EUPHORIA. “So I wrote this song to cope with the guilt I felt about my subconscious being tainted with another person.”
Each of the seven tracks on the Centerpiece EP was inspired by that fateful dream. “I wrote the rest of the EP about us reconnecting — us progressing from casually talking again, being in a serious relationship with each other,” she shares. Rather than crafting the tracks around being lovesick or heartbroken, Thompson looks at her situation from a bird’s-eye view; penning tracks about two people who, against all odds, found their way back to one another. Anna flexes both her knack for songwriting and her love of a catchy pop melody in the EP, creating a cohesive sound with deft production that rivals the likes of pop heavyweights such as Ariana Grande or Zara Larsson.
This EP has been a long time coming for Thompson. She was 11 when she became a student at the “School of Rock,” she was just 16 when a label first signed her, and 17 when the label decided to have a change of heart and backed out of her deal. But, after going viral on TikTok in 2020, Anna Thompson decided this was the year to shed any fears or qualms about releasing music as an independent artist, despite being told early in her career she “wasn’t famous enough.”
In true Thompson fashion, she defied those expectations; garnering a solid network of feverish listeners from everywhere from Turkey to New York to Brazil. Although this is the first body of work released from her, it’s clear throughout Centerpiece that she’s ready for whatever comes next after this collection of songs.
