Emily Anderson on the gift of being known over time
Emily Anderson was holding her friend’s baby when the song began. They were catching up, the way old friends do, and somewhere between the news and the laughter the idea for “In The Garden” arrived on her knee, so to speak, with a small person’s weight.
It is an unlikely origin for a song about time, and it suits the subject. Anderson has a habit of measuring herself against a schedule nobody gave her. “So often I feel like I’m ‘behind’ or playing catch up in my own life,” she says. What interrupts that feeling is rarely an achievement. It is an afternoon with someone who has known her through more than one version of herself, and who is plainly glad she’s there.
That is the territory of the new single, out 16 October: the particular richness of a friendship with a long memory, where you can look back over growth and change and see how far you’ve both come. Anderson’s conclusion is practical. “Time is moving whether I fight it or not,” she says, “so what if I choose to enjoy what I have?”
The song was produced by Sarah Tudzin, the Grammy-winning producer whose credits include boygenius and Eliza McLamb. Tudzin and Anderson have also shared a stage, which gives the pairing its own small echo of the song’s theme: two people who knew each other before the record existed.
Anderson, who grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska before settling in Los Angeles, has built her catalogue on that kind of closeness. Critics have noted songs that “shine with a smile and a smirk”, and the instinct has travelled well. “The Light” found its way into Netflix’s Virgin River, and “Gold” soundtracked a Miller Lite campaign. Her writing finds the funny and the tender in the same ordinary detail, which is why a baby on a knee is enough to carry a song.
“In The Garden” is the first look at her third album, Be Everything, due in spring 2027, with a video to follow in the coming weeks. If the album keeps to this song’s terms, it will be less about arriving anywhere than about who happens to be in the room.
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