Each Measure Feature: Anna Porto

FEATURE

There are some songs you just keep coming back to – not in spite of the sinking feeling they give you, but because of it. I’ve had Anna Porto’s “Hopeless Love Affair” on repeat since I first heard it. No matter how many times I listen to it, it doesn’t get any easier to hear the pain in Porto’s voice as she sings about her experience with a toxic relationship. It also doesn’t get any less beautiful.

With a release date of September 19th, 2025, “Hopeless Love Affair” is the Melbourne-based pop artist’s latest single, and it follows the success of her 2024 debut “Every Little Possible Lie.” She wrote and recorded the piece with her sister, Christa Porto, and it’s part of a larger project inspired by a real-life relationship from Anna’s past.

They say every heartbreak makes us a little wiser. For a 21-year-old, Anna Porto demonstrates a startlingly mature perspective on relationships and abuse in “Hopeless Love Affair,” which paints a vivid portrait of a woman in the midst of a nightmare relationship.  There’s a brutal honesty in lines like, “Even if you wanted me dead / I’d still lay in your bed.” These are the words of someone who can no longer pretend that everything is okay, but nevertheless feels trapped in old patterns. 

As Porto’s melancholy piano playing gives way to an eerie electronic soundscape and the song reaches its stirring chorus, there’s mounting feeling of desperation, and we’re reminded that when you’re trapped in a loveless relationship, knowing better isn’t enough. For me, the most compelling element of the song is Porto’s silky-smooth voice, which achieves a perfect balance between fragility and raw, unabashed rage. She belts out the chorus without faltering once. I don’t doubt for a moment that she’s singing from the heart. 

“Hopeless Love Affair” shows Porto to be the kind of confrontational and uncompromising female pop artist that I can’t get enough of. Fortunately, there’s more to come from her. “Hopeless Love Affair” is only the first song off her new EP, which will be released as a series of singles. If she’s able to keep up the impressive momentum she’s achieved so far, we have a truly amazing EP to look forward to.

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