Growing up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Azure Ryder never felt like she truly connected with those around her. “I always had this feeling that I needed to be out in the world,” she tells Apple Music. Her first step on that path was attending a summer program at Berklee College of Music in the US. “I was suddenly surrounded by this passion and drive within me and other people,” she says. “To just be in that energy was really exciting to me.” Upon returning to Australia, she quit her retail job and started focusing on bringing to life this sound she’d had in her head for years. “I wanted to draw from classic songs and folk and even soul, the things I grew up with, but also bring it into a fresh light.” She does that on her lush debut EP, Running With the Wolves, the title of which has special meaning. “Wolves are my spirit animal,” says Ryder. Here she goes through the stories behind each song on the record. Dizzy “I was going through a personal situation that was very up and down. I really wanted to write a song that felt like those emotions and those rises and falls, and that you heard them not only in the melody but the music. I want to accept that life is full of reoccurring highs and lows and you have to be open to going with them wherever they take you. That’s when you become fully alive.” Wolves “I have a special place in my heart for wolves, and I do think I’m connected quite strongly to them and what they represent. To me, wolves are driven by their heart and their passion, and that’s something that I like to live by and something I see within myself. So this song was literally about taking control of letting the uncontrollable happen. Just accepting it and letting those things turn you upside down and inside out, because that to me is what life is.” Stir the Dust “I wrote that just before I went overseas to London and LA to start writing. It was a real turning point for me where I was like, I’m ready to do this, I’m ready to step into my life and shake it up. I was finally on this real journey to get where I always wanted to be, and it felt like quite a powerful moment. Up until that point I had quite a lot of challenges in connecting with people. I am grateful for those scars because I think I was able to turn them into something beautiful, and if I didn’t have those experiences, then I wouldn’t have these things to talk about and to say.” Crimson “It’s about a guy that I’d been seeing and…it was the closest I had come to thinking I felt what love is, but it was also the most horrible of times. So basically I likened that to crimson, the color, and all those kinds of things that are crimson are a reflection of what the experience and relationship was like with him. It’s definitely about coming out of that sort of relationship and coming back to myself and knowing that I don’t need that person to be who I am.”