Ananda’s Journey Through Music, Emotion and Dora 2025

 

With a voice that pierces straight to the heart and lyrics that echo raw emotion, Ananda has captivated us with her powerful ballad Lies Lay Cold. As the song gains momentum ahead of her performance at Dora 2025, Croatia’s national Eurovision selection, we had the chance to interview with Ananda and uncover the inspiration, challenges, and vision behind this entry.

Let’s hear from Ananda herself about how the song came to life.

1. Lies Lay Cold has a cinematic quality that has caught many listeners’ attention. What was the inspiration behind the song, and how did the songwriting process unfold?

I wrote it during one of the most difficult periods of my life – I was going through a lot, and since creating is my way of coping, I put my soul into Lies Lay Cold. I wrote it in one take, created the melody in 3 or 4 minutes, and then added lyrics – so the whole process was about 20 minutes, actually. I was in Gothenburg at the time, working on another song, and when I came home from the studio I opened my laptop and just wrote what came to mind that night. My songwriting process usually works like that – if I have to overthink a song I’m writing, then I know it’s not good enough for me to finish it.

Then my incredible Swedish team that consists of Andreas Björkman and Jonas Ekdahl made the production and the arrangement and finished the song with me, perfecting all the things that were missing in my original version. It was a very natural process, even though it took a year of convincing me to even want to put it out. Since it was so personal, I was going to delete it from my demo folder, and never wanted anyone to hear it. My best friend then heard it accidentally one day while listening to my other demos and was hooked on it since that moment. 8 or 9 months later, I agreed to send it over to my team in Sweden. Since I was also one of the writers on 2 other songs for Dora this year, we went to Gothenburg again in 2024 to record those, but the day we landed, Andreas and Jonas sent me the first instrumental of Lies Lay Cold. I was still very skeptical on whether I should proceed with it or not, but after hearing it, I knew I had to, so I ended up recording Lies Lay Cold along with backing vocals for Monopol. Andreas' and Jonas’ amazing support later on then ended up being one of the main reasons why the song ended up happening.

2. Many fans have praised your powerful vocals in Lies Lay Cold. How did you approach the vocal delivery for this song, and did you face any challenges while recording it?

I want to thank you all, first of all, your kind words truly mean a lot.

I did face quite a lot of challenges because I couldn’t stop getting emotional about it while recording it in the studio. So much so that I ended up getting so frustrated about certain parts of the song that I was stopping myself from singing, that I had to get some fresh air a couple of times.

When I wanted to give up or had enough of trying, Andreas and Jonas wouldn’t let me. They insisted I can do and deliver parts I didn’t think I could – and it ended up just being me and my brain sabotaging because I was so emotionally overwhelmed. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have had the courage it took for certain parts. But when I relaxed and eased up, everything seemed easy all of a sudden. They played a key role in me delivering how I did, believing in me even when I didn’t. Today I sing my heart out to it with full pleasure while practicing for Dora. Key lesson; it takes time for certain things.

3. The song seems to have an emotional and powerful undercurrent. What message do you hope to convey to your audience through Lies Lay Cold?

The main message I would like everyone to take from it is that destroying and sacrificing yourself in order to help someone you love find themselves, is never worth your peace, mental health, or time. We often forget that sometimes, by loving someone too hard or too much, we lose ourselves. Love yourself first so others could too.

4. There’s a lot of excitement around your live performance of this song. How are you preparing for the live show at Dora 2025, and what can fans expect from your stage presence?

I’m glad to hear it!

I don’t only want to make it dramatic – I want people to feel how I felt while I was writing it. Sometimes, music makes us feel things we don’t want to, or things we’re escaping from – and we need to face them in order to grow. So, my performance is going to be fully emotion-based, very symbolic, very cold – but at the same time as if I was to burn up. I hope that the audience will find something personal in my performance and make it their own – with their own interpretation to it.

5. What sets Lies Lay Cold apart from the other entries, and why do you believe it resonates so deeply with listeners?

I love nothing more than when someone comes and tells me they resonate with my song. Especially because it’s so personal, and was never written for anyone to hear it. Which I now realize as selfish. I thought it was too anxiety-inducing having to share myself fully raw with such a wide amount of people – forgetting then that all of my favorite artists create music exactly like so – by being raw, honest, and true to their art.

And those are the artists I resonate with the most, and the ones that helped me the most.

I would say that I always like to accentuate the fact that singers who sing their own songs are as honest and true as it can get. And I always resonate most with singers/songwriters, rather than people who sing other people’s music. There’s nothing wrong with either of those options – but I always end up connecting the most with artists who I can truly feel have felt what they’re singing about, because they wrote it firsthand. That’s why I would set it apart – because I gave it to the audience to either tear it apart, love it, destroy it, hate it, adore it – and I’ll love the outcome whatever it is – exactly because I see it as a part of myself I had to heal in order to be able to sing it with another meaning in mind now. Honest art is made exactly for that, in my opinion, with no expectations. Because you use it as a page in the journal, as a coping mechanism.

6. Several fans have expressed that Lies Lay Cold would make a great entry for Eurovision. Do you have any thoughts about how your song might perform on the international stage if you were selected to represent Croatia?

As someone who has been in the Eurofandom very intensely for over 15 years, that’s the most insane part of this entire experience. Seeing people love it so much to actually consider me as a representative on the stage I’ve been watching so long. We have a concept that we believe would reach its full potential on the Eurovision stage. Especially because of what the stage is like this year in Basel, the LED screens, and all the opportunities to use. I think it would be an unexpected staging that we would do then, because it would differ from the one we’re creating for Dora, too. Perhaps that would intrigue certain people who don’t expect so much from it. We’re ready for all situations. Either way, it would be an incredible honor to represent my country.