When Annie Tammearu, also known as Mother Soki, created the song “Rivet Gun” in her humble apartment in Minneapolis, she never expected that Grammy award-winning pop star Ellie Goulding would take notice.
“It’s crazy because my sister and I used to watch her music videos all the time,” said Mother Soki. “I feel very honored that she like loved it so much and decided to post a video to it. And that means she understands my vision, too, which is great.”
The 21-year-old published the song on social media less than a month ago, where she’s developed a modest fanbase as an unsigned artist — but “Rivet Gun” was different.
“It was the first time I wrote a song where it’s like all the lyrics came out like vomit, like it was crazy,” she said.
Mother Soki took it to her friends and collaborators.
“I brought it to the studio with Jack Pfeffer, Elijah Herchert and Mo Todd. Eljiah rewrote the guitar over my vocals and sort of just made the empty space feel so necessary,” she said.
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Proud of what they’d accomplished, she put it out before it was finished.
“‘Let me just post this demo of Rivet Gun.’ Bad idea, but also good idea,” she said.
It was shared more than 100,000 times on TikTok in the first 30 hours, and has grown from there.
It now has 1.5 million streams on Spotify, and Mother Soki just signed a deal with Mom + Pop, an independent record label whose roster includes Alicia Keys and Tom Morello, co-founder of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave.
“Bringing people in was like the best thing for me and my art, because sometimes you have to ask for help, you know. Like I can’t do everything by myself,” she said.
A good lesson for music and for life.
“It still feels like my own, which is great, but it’s also ours,” she said.
Mother Soki is working on a music video for the single and additional songs for an album.
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