ICMP’s Anna Johnson leads music collective to write charity anthem

ICMP Cert HE Songwriting student Anna Johnson formed a female-led music collective to write a new song celebrating the achievements of the England women’s football team, the Lionesses. 

Anna has a passion for football alongside her music, working part time at Powerleague, a five-a-side football initiative and was encouraged to write a song about the national team during her studies at ICMP. 

As part of the creative process surrounding, Anna led a recording session using ICMP’s facilities at the Queen’s Park campus and has now released the song to raise money for charity. 

Commenting on the track, Anna said: "During one of my business classes with Loretta Andrews, we spoke about the importance of creating a story around music release and then the idea was birthed from there. The men's England team have countless songs, 'Three Lions', 'Vindaloo' ... where is the song for the Lionesses?"

I have always found women spaces incredibly healing and transformative and loved the idea of creating this anthem with all women. Firstly, I thought women rappers and vocalists and then this developed further, so we have female producers and a female mixing and mastering engineer."

The songwriting sessions took place at ICMP’s Queen’s Park studios and Anna worked closely with Songwriting Tutor Carla Monroe to develop a plan for the structure of the recording day.  

Anna said: "We watched footage of the Lionesses to get us inspired at the beginning of the day and then split into groups and began writing a hook and chorus lyrics. By the end of the day we had a created lots of ideas which I took away with our two producers, Annie Rew Shaw and Eve Horne. We edited and re-drafted and decided on final lyrics at our last recording session at Queens's Park on the 14th June."

Collaborators included producers Annie Rew Shaw (ICMP Creative Production Masters) and Eve Horne, Claudia Escaler as sound engineer (ICMP Masters Graduate), vocalists; Barbara Pursey (ICMP Vocal tutor), Sidney Busby (ICMP Songwriting), Kaspara, Indira, So Sha (ICMP graduate), Annie Jay, Austel (ICMP), rappers/MCs; Lavz (ICMP graduate), Truemendous, MC Deadman, songwriters;  Anna Johnson, Sidney Busby, Eloise, Nimmo (ICMP), Becky White (ICMP), Lavz, MC Deadman, Truemendous, Barbara Pursey and Indira. ICMP's Shane Beales and mentor Sophie Daniels were also instrumental in getting the project off the ground. 

"There are so many elements to the project and people are attracted for different reasons but I believe the right people came along. Whether it's their love for women's football, passion for gender equality, love of garage music or feeling strongly about the charity aspect and the proceeds of the recording being donated to charity Solace."

Without coming to study at ICMP I do not think this would have been possible. I have learned so much during my one-year course and met so many incredibly supportive people who want you to do well. It is an amazing community to be part of and I am forever grateful."

The collective has chosen to support Solace Women's Aid, a UK-based charity supporting women and children through abuse and violence for over 50 years.  

Money will be raised through purchasing the anthem and ticket costs to attend the release party happening later this summer. 

Supporters can also choose to donate directly to the cause via Go Fund Me.  

The track is now available to stream via all major platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp.

You can listen to the track below:

Photo credits: Antonio Esquivel