Hannah Zeile has been writing her own music for years, and today, the world finally can hear what she’s been working on. The This Is Us actress released her debut single “Ode To My Anxiety” today — a perfectly honest and vulnerable message to any anxiety-sufferers out there, including herself, during these unprecedented times. “We’re all stuck at home and trying to find some sort of silver-lining in all of this…I really had all the time in the world to focus on music and I needed a creative outlet because my anxiety was really heightened,” Hannah explained in an EXCLUSIVE interview with HollywoodLife. “I ended up creating music and writing my first single. I’ve made original music before, but I just never put it out.”
Hannah explained that she would “get in her head” and overthink things when it came to her own music, so she typically resorted to playing beautiful covers on her YouTube channel. “It just feels like the pieces were aligning correctly,” she said of her decision to release “Ode To My Anxiety.” “Music is a lot different from playing a character. When I’m acting, I’m not coming out as myself, and music is a lot more vulnerable, so even when I created a song, it was for my own cathartic reasons, not for anyone else,” Hannah continued. “I just figured with this one, if I don’t start somewhere, I probably never will.”
The actress revealed that the words for this song came to her naturally, and she explained it like she was “having a conversation about the way I was feeling.” “I felt more anxious than usual that day and just didn’t feel like myself… sometimes it feels hard to breathe and your chest feels heavy,” Hannah described.
gmbeatz produced the song and Hannah’s brother handled the instrumentals. “It’s such an intimate song and so personal,” she explained. “It’s a landmark, it’s my first song and I wanted to involve my brother, especially because he got me into music when I was young.” So sweet!