In the blink of an eye, Anh Le had her world flipped upside down. It started the day she took the Law School Admission Test. A get-together to celebrate the completion of the test brought forth some unsavory news about the person she had been seeing for the last five years. Before she had time to fully deal with the breakup, her father became ill and required her to move from New York to Pennsylvania to assist her family. The only way for her to process her emotions was through songwriting.

She said it wasn’t really a choice for her to write songs about that moment in her life; the songs just came to her. Whether she was sitting in the hospital with her family or sitting alone in the replica of her Wisconsin childhood bedroom, she felt one with her pen. By the time each and every emotion made its way onto a page, she knew she had a full-length album in the works.

“I ended up finding out I was being very thoroughly misled about so many things,” she said. “It just shattered this illusion of this love story that I was so attached to, that really defined me for so long.”

At the time, she convinced herself that she was fully prepared to quickly release music. Was that thought partly based on the idea that this person that wronged her would surely hear it and know the damage they caused? Yes. Is that why she ultimately waited a year before slowly releasing each song? Also yes. Those feelings pushed her to complete the music, but as she sat in those feelings, she knew she needed the time to perfect them.

During that time, the song “Gut Feeling” presented itself. She was working through her emotions, having conversations with herself and searching for a clarity that led her to the lyrics. In the middle of writing it, everything about it felt like the first single. Eventually, she was honing in on the lyrics with the intention of sharing it with her audience first. “The Plot” and “Corrine” would follow, almost creating a trilogy to tell the beginning of her story.

“It feels like a hero’s journey, where the first three songs lay out who I thought that I was a couple of years ago,” she said. “The next three feel like it represents the thick of what will happen, and then the third three is everything that I’ve decided since then and how I’ve chosen to move on from that time; the person I’m meant to be coming out of it.”

In order to perfect the songs, she wanted to tackle production on her own. Initially she felt bad as she has worked with producers in the past that she loved working with and plans to do so again, but a newfound confidence from her time spent in Pennsylvania made her want to step out of her comfort zone.

It started with driving on the highway. The second time she had ever driven on the highway, in fact. Although she received her driver’s license as a teenager, she had never really driven anywhere far or without someone in the passenger seat. After moving to New York, driving wasn’t necessary, but when she found herself in Pennsylvania and taking care of her father, she had to conquer her fear.

“The only thing that stopped me was my own mind,” she said. “It had been such a big road block personally for me, and I think my relationship with producing and my own music shifted around then too.”

She started small - driving to the mall and back - and one day she felt like she could conquer anything. That included juggling law school and creating her album at the same time.

“It’s going to be really hard,” she said. “Challenging in many ways I can’t even imagine and predict now, but I think it just felt like this was where it was pulling me towards.”

Her journey thus far had been a musical one, but pre-ÊMIA she found passions in political science, speech and debate. An integral moment that made her want to pursue something outside of music came from watching the struggles of her non-verbal, autistic brother as he and their family took on the public school system. Le was a major advocate for his education, partly due to the language barrier between district officials and Le’s mother. They thankfully had assistance from advocates who knew laws and templates guaranteed to make a difference, and seeing their dedication make an impact on Le.

In a way, law school is another form of creativity for her. One side is logical while the other is ruleless. One is structured and one is chaotic. She sees creativity in both, and believes that in the end they will balance each other out.

Le believes that having a background in the music industry did prepare her for law school. Nothing comes as a surprise to her; she knows a thing or two about self-taught, independent, last-minute curriculums that may or may not impact her future. The last year challenged her in ways she couldn’t imagine, but being on the other side of it has made her all the more ambitious. To her, becoming a lawyer while writing, recording and producing her debut full-length are two sides of the same coin.