Anique is prepared to take listeners on a trip to the valley and a tour of her heart.
Fourth-year sociology student Anique Wertheimer, who releases music mononymously as Anique, said she grew up in Los Angeles and attended Spring Sing each year with her family. As the tradition persisted, Wertheimer said her relationship with music grew through classical piano training in her youth. However, she added that she felt limited by the conventions of classical music. Tapping into her love for theater, Wertheimer said she found that combining singing with the piano clicked, and her love for writing short stories translated to songwriting. While she hadn’t leaned into this passion in her first years of college, the classes she took with the music industry and musicology minors built her confidence and inspiration to pursue music, she said.
“Songwriting has always been a very private practice for me, and I think the forced proximity of being paired up with somebody you’ve never met and having to delve into your deepest trauma and write a song about it is something so unique,” Wertheimer said. “There is nowhere I leave more inspired than the songwriting classes here at UCLA.”
While she has performed along the way, Wertheimer said Spring Sing is a large but exciting step forward in her repertoire. She added that she was inspired to audition after seeing her friend and collaborator Ella Gibson perform – and win – at last year’s competition. Given Wertheimer’s history attending the event as a child, participating in the competition feels like a full circle moment, she said.
With her first-ever Spring Sing set, she said she’s performing her own unreleased song, “A Trip to the Valley.” Enlisting an all-female entourage of seven women to support her, including Gibson, Wertheimer said that the opportunity to share her music at Spring Sing is quite special.
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Gibson, a third-year music industry student, is singing backing vocals for Wertheimer and said they met in a songwriting class composed mostly of women. The experience was special, Gibson said, as the students connected quickly over a passion for representation of women in the music industry. Wertheimer said it was in these kinds of classes that she developed confidence in performing, as she had an opportunity to perform both in class and in front of small audiences.
“The first time Anique played a song in class, I was like, ‘This sounds like an unreleased Gracie Abrams song,’” Gibson said. “She’s a total wordsmith, and just so humble and so sweet about it.”
Matty Gottesman, a fourth-year communications student and Wertheimer’s friend from New Student Orientation, said he has worked on and performed several songs with Wertheimer across their time at UCLA. These collaborations evolved into the studio, as Gottesman added that he began to produce songs that Wertheimer had written, including the unreleased “A Trip to the Valley.”
“It’s really cool to have that producer-artist relationship that has been cultivated over the course of years now,” Gottesman said. “That’s been something super cool and super fun that I really haven’t experienced before.”
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“A Trip to the Valley” is the culmination of Wertheimer’s personal journey with songwriting, she said. Where before she shied away from writing about her personal experiences, Wertheimer said “A Trip to the Valley” bears her own experiences, describing the feeling of falling back into a bad habit and realizing, at the time or in retrospect, that you had regressed into that “valley.”
Wertheimer said the song, despite its personal connection to her own life, has taken on new forms as listeners have applied it to their own lives. As for translating the song to the live stage, Wertheimer said the experience has been nothing short of fun. When adapting the song for Spring Sing, she added that she has given space for embellishments, including a saxophone solo, which she said is her favorite instrument.
Beyond Spring Sing, Wertheimer said she anticipates building her catalogue of released music, with “A Trip to the Valley” in the next few months. Her debut EP, “When It’s Raining,” comprises her seven favorite songs from her early songwriting career, pulling from pop inspirations like Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift, she said. The future builds upon her songwriting prowess with an increased confidence in writing about herself, which Wertheimer said has infused a level of authenticity into the songs.
“I was like, ‘If I get in, it’s a sign that I was supposed to do it, and I’m going to look back on it and be so proud of myself,’” Wertheimer said. “And while it is scary, I think it’s special, and it’s gonna be special for my family too.”
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