Tender, jazzy riffs — in a style reminiscent of her own role models like Ariana Grande and Keshia Cole — meld with a sophisticated story in Mountain View High School junior Saumya Anand’s newest single, “The Exception.”

Anand had always dreamed of releasing her music, even before she began dabbling with songwriting in fifth grade. In preschool, Anand was already a songwriter, often crafting short pieces about her days. In some ways, she attributes her early musicality to her family’s background in Carnatic music, a classical Southern Indian style of singing that features complex rhythms and melodies.

She enjoyed singing, but it wasn’t until she was six years old and placed second in a youth festival with “Let It Go,” from “Frozen” that people outside her family started to discover her gift for singing.  

Thanks to the festival audience’s array of compliments, Anand’s mother signed her up for vocal lessons to formally develop her budding singing talent. After six rigorous years of training with her teacher, Anand decided to switch instructors, choosing New York City-based artist Sarah Bishop to expand her training in more contemporary styles.

“I want[ed] to be able to sing like Ariana Grande,” Anand said, referring to one of the reasons she chose to work with Sarah Bishop.

She carefully chose “The Exception” out of her many other song drafts in 2024 — not because it was the best, but because it was solid and had the most potential to develop with a producer, she said. Above all, Anand didn’t want to release her best work without a sense of her audience and platform size, she said.

Anand’s writing process for “The Exception” came naturally — through humming, piecing lyrics together and adding in piano accompaniment — although it took longer to find a producer and schedule a recording session. While “The Exception” might come as a breakup song to listeners, Anand meant for it to be less romantic and more about perfectionism, ambition and the loss of childhood dreams.

“Some songs are so abstract that it’s like from your own ambiguous experience,” Anand said.

Anand recorded the entire song in a single take during a four-hour recording session with her producer. Over email, he helped develop the backing instrumental track, tone and resonance of the song before it got recorded.

After “The Exception” was released, Anand’s inbox swarmed with Instagram direct messages, strangers approaching her with compliments and countless Spotify notifications. Roughly one month after “The Exception” was released, it amassed over 5,300 streams, although the number was later reduced due to suspected artificial streaming.

“I was just really, really grateful and really happy because I cried so much over the song,” Anand said. “My perfectionism really got in my head. I heard every flaw.”

Despite Anand’s criticisms of her music, most listeners only had positive feedback, Anand said.

“[The Exception] felt, to me, unlike a kid writing something to impersonate a popular genre,” Mountain View High theater teacher Pancho Morris said. “It felt like a poet or a young songwriter expressing a thought through music.”

Double threat: Musical theater

Anand’s singing talent carries over into musical theater and acting, which she first got involved in by playing the genie in her middle school’s production of “Aladdin Junior.”

“I always had it in me that I wanted to be a singer, and musical theater was something that came along later as an option,” she said.

In her second-ever musical, Mountain View High’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” she starred as the main antagonist: the flesh-eating plant Audrey-II.  

“She [Anand] was just this little ninth grader with so much power and emotion in her technique,” Morris said. “We usually don’t cast ninth graders in lead roles, but she really proved herself.”

Anand’s love for theater and acting led her to join the Summer University Theater Experience in Los Angeles last summer. As one of 14 selected juniors from across the country, Anand had the opportunity to study the musical theater process with faculty from 12 of the top schools in musical theater, including Carnegie Mellon, Syracuse and UCLA.

She also starred as Euridyce in Mountain View High’s production of “Hadestown” this spring, which she described as the “highest-quality production” she’s ever participated in.

Alongside her involvement in theater, Anand is also a part of Mountain View High’s most advanced choir, the Madrigals, where she sings roughly 10-14 hours per week. The group recently traveled to the United Kingdom and performs as many as 15 times per week during the holiday season.

In addition to singing and theater, Anand has signed with Marla Dell Talent Agency for modeling. While she hasn’t directly been a part of advertisements yet, she receives early-stage clothes and gives feedback on fit and comfort.

After graduating, Anand hopes to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater and, above all, continue performing.  

“I would not be surprised to see this student on the Mountain View High Wikipedia page in five years,” Morris said.