With her vulnerability resonating with audiences across the world, emerging star Lizzy McAlpine is coming for the industry. Music Week meets her to talk feelings, going viral on TikTok and new music…
WORDS: MIRANDA BARDSLEY
I’m really excited!” says Lizzy McAlpine, as she sits in the green room before her debut performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in New York. She has only just finished soundcheck and is spending a break before showtime talking to Music Week. “The nerves will happen at some point, but not right now,” she beams.
The Philadelphia-born 23-year-old is everywhere right now. Her song, Ceilings, finds itself at the centre of a viral TikTok trend, both in its original form and a sped-up version. Sitting at No.6 in the UK charts at the time of writing, it has amassed an impressive 178,209 UK sales, 120 million Spotify streams and almost 500,000 TikTok creations, where McAlpine has 673,000 followers.
Known for its candid lyricism and expressive vocals, McAlpine’s music blends elements of indie-pop, folk and R&B. Ceilings, an acoustic-driven ballad from her album Five Seconds Flat, released independently via Harbour Artists & Music in April of last year, embodies this unique sound. The track is drawn from nostalgia for an imaginary love, and fans have been loving its dramatic plot twist, making it their own all over TikTok.
So, how does it feel to be going viral now?
“Honestly, it’s been surreal,” she answers. “I wasn’t expecting this. I mean, no one expects a viral moment, when I make music it’s not ever in my mind. But it’s been really cool to see a community being built around it.”
McAlpine explains that, although she loves watching people “organically connect” to Ceilings, she can’t say she feels the same.
“I definitely don’t relate to it anymore,” she laughs. “I’m in a healthy relationship now and Ceilings was not about that.”
As an artist who has never equated success with viral fame, McAlpine is still also deciding how she feels about TikTok.
“It’s a love-hate relationship,” she admits. “Right now, it’s leaning towards love, people are embracing the song and I’m really grateful for that. But there are moments where I don’t like being on it, I don’t like seeing what people say about me.”
McAlpine pauses for a moment as she thinks about the effects that social media can have on young artists.
“It’s complex,” she says. “The ability to have artists be so easily accessible is really nice. I think what labels choose to do with new-found overnight successes is a different story.”
When asked what she means, McAlpine harks back to 2020, when she uploaded a snippet of her singing a sentimental tune featuring the line, ‘You ruined The 1975…’, which was followed by a surge of requests from fans to release it and approaches from labels.
“For me, it was definitely a good idea that I didn’t sign to a label after the song went viral, because that’s not the kind of music I want to make,” she says. “It’s not me as an artist. If I’d been signed, they would have expected that kind of music and I wouldn’t have given it to them, it wouldn’t have been great.”
For now, McAlpine is working with Harbour Artists & Music in conjunction with AWAL (“They’re great, they just let me do what I want to do!”), but a major deal is on the horizon.
“We’re in the process of that whole thing, it’s going to happen,” she says. “I want to take it to the next level.”
McAlpine’s openness defines her music and she explains that she couldn’t do it any other way, that the process is not so much cathartic as it is revealing for her own understanding of herself.
“I write because I’m trying to figure out how I feel,” she muses. “The only way I can is to put it in a song. I’m so analytical, I talk about that in therapy.”
And that vulnerability extends beyond her songwriting. McAlpine is also notably honest about navigating her sudden global fame. Although she’s been building a following since her 2020 debut album Give Me A Minute, the past year has been a whirlwind and won’t be slowing down anytime soon, with her latest tour getting underway this month.
“I don’t love touring,” admits the singer, who is still getting to grips with the chaos of life on the road. “It’s really emotionally draining and hard for me. I get overstimulated so easily that doing a show everyday for however long completely wipes me out, and after the show I just have to go to bed.”
McAlpine is often caught between not wanting to disappoint her fans and attempting to preserve her own mental health.
“I’m figuring it all out,” she says. “Spending time with my team and alone both help. It’s a balance, but I love seeing fans sing my songs. I’m excited for the tour – the venues are bigger and we have set design, it’s going to be cool.”
It has been a long journey to get to this point. Before McAlpine was found by her manager, Harbour’s Sam Bailey, on Instagram, she’d been making music for years. With a grandmother taking her to Broadway shows as a child, she grew up in the worlds of music and theatre.
“I was very close to going to college for acting and applied to Berklee [College Of Music] as a last minute thing,” she recalls. “I wonder all the time how different my life would be if I’d gone to acting school. I definitely would not be here...”
Her life may have also been quite different if she stayed at Berklee. During her course, just before Give Me A Minute was finished, McAlpine left to pursue music full-time.
“I’d been feeling like school was holding me back,” she says. “I was like, ‘I want this as a career so I want to focus on it.’”
And although leaving her friends behind and moving to LA alone wasn’t easy, she has no regrets.
Fast forward to now, McAlpine has already written her next album, and it is set to be just as raw as her previous two.
Promising a “’70s folk”-influenced sound, she hints at the record’s unguarded and self-aware nature.
“It’s interesting, the album doesn’t [paint] me in a great light,” she says. “It’s about my last relationship, and I write from a point of view where it’s like, ‘I know I’ve messed up.’ It’s moving, visceral and I’m not sugar-coating anything.”
For years, McAlpine has been working with Berklee friend and producer Philip Etherington, but is branching out for the new record, which has no release date as of yet. She has also chosen to have no artist features, unlike Five Seconds Flat, which featured both Finneas and Jacob Collier.
“This album isn’t meant for that, it’s personal,” she says.
And that, ultimately, is exactly what McAlpine wants, to share her truths and connect with her listeners.
“At the end of the day, I’m just going to do what I love, which is writing music,” she concludes. “Anything that isn’t positive is just noise.”
