“Music allows me to have this creative and emotional outlet.”

Anushna Sapatnekar: “I started becoming more involved in music when I started writing songs. I think I was 10 years old when I wrote my first song, and I started wanting to learn more musical instruments to support that passion. I was thinking, “Wow, cool people play guitar,” so I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. And I stole my brother’s guitar, and I just started playing a few songs and learning chords. It just skyrocketed from there because the guitar is a pretty easy instrument to learn. I also learned how to play the piano. In the beginning, I hated it, because I was mainly playing classical music, but then my music teacher introduced me to the idea of playing pop songs, and that just made piano more enjoyable. 

I think my songwriting has improved a lot too. My songs have gotten a lot less cheesy and depressing, but they’ve also started becoming more poetic and open to other interpretations. Now, my lyrics have this big storyline, and you can interpret it for yourself. For my songwriting process, it starts with piano with figuring out chord progressions that I want to write a song with. And then from there, I develop a melody, and from the melody, I develop the words. Sometimes, I hit writer’s block, which can be tough to get through. But I’ve started this thing when I write down one thing every day, which has helped get past that.”